The Dark Blonde
by katnassy
Summary: A dark fae universe where a mere human can become a ruthless ruler. A completely AU take on the happy fae-mily with appearances of pretty much everyone. No clear pairings so far, not even sure which of the blondes of the story is really dark.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: I do not own Lost Girl or any of the characters.**

**This is a weird little idea and i am not sure where i am going with it but i certainly am enjoying writing it and hope that you enjoy reading it as well.**

Lauren passed a hand over her immaculately set blonde hair with a weary sigh of dissatisfaction and out of the corner of her eye saw the mighty fae shift from foot to foot, their gazes turned downwards with a guilty expression.

"You lost her again," she stated, her voice mellow but her brown eyes cold, "the valkyrie slipped through the net again, she who has managed to do us so much damage and keep me from what I desire is free to wreak havoc again. I'll let you know your Queen is very upset by this blatant incompetence."

"We are crushed by your disdain," Bruce, the giant fae, piped up, his handsome, if a bit vacant, face truly reflecting the desperation of his words.

"But at least, we have caught her dog," Vex the Mesmer chimed in, "He's in the cage in the basement, awaiting your justice."

"Wow!" Lauren allowed herself to sound pleasantly surprised, recognizing the necessity of the carrot as well as the stick, "That should be quite a feat! You whined so many times he was impossible to capture. Last time you met, I believe, he nearly bit your tool hand off."

The Brit's eyes flicked down to his still bandaged limb and his dark eyes lit up with hatred. "I can't control the animal in him the way I can control fae and people whenever my Queen orders me to," he said smoothly, "But this time we trapped him – he chose to stay behind to cover the valkyrie's retreat and we managed to overpower him bodily."

"_I_ managed to overpower the wolf," Bruce interjected, eager to show off his strength to his ruler, "You were keeping your precious self at a safe distance."

"That's because I can use my loaf as well as my muscle and operate a remotely-controlled bear trap when I can't remotely control the prey," the Mesmer returned haughtily and Lauren raised a hand when she saw Bruce open his mouth to respond.

"Enough with your childish bickering," she said, "I've got the picture. It's still great news and I'll see the wolf asap, time for him to pay for his disobedience."

"Can I play with him a little first, my Queen?" Vex jumped in, unable, even under a blood compulsion, to restrain his sadistic streak.

"You have ten minutes," the blonde woman sighed indulgently, like a mother allowing an extra candy to placate a rambunctious child, and noticed a pair of huge silver-grey eyes look up straight at her with laser intensity of disapproval.

"Go, Vex, get my new, precious prisoner ready," Lauren waved a dismissal, "I'll join you soon in the basement. And you, Bruce, get me Bo, tell her I need her right now."

While the two fae shuffled out of the door, the woman crossed the room, her high heels noiseless on the deep-pile carpet, and stopped in front of a huge plush arm-chair that practically drowned a tiny figure of a young dark-haired girl slouching in it.

"You don't like it, Kenzi," she stated without asking, "But you know better than anyone that's our only way to survive and to be free of them, of the leeching supernaturally powered creatures that have been shamelessly exploiting and preying on us for so many centuries."

"Yeah, I've heard that pitch before," the girl shot back bluntly, her expression unreadable.

"And you've experienced it first-hand, my little sister," Lauren mildly reminded, "Remember Hale? The fae who turned your pretty head, treated you like a servant and then discarded you like a used tissue?"

"The one who wasn't able to overcome the centuries-old prejudice that was bred into him and who you turned into a robot-like, senseless, emotionless dork?" Kenzi looked up defiantly at her all-powerful sister, "I don't know which version of him I prefer."

For the first time in a very long while Lauren's armor gave a tiny crack as her brown eyes filled with hurt.

"I did it for you," her voice dropped to whisper, "So that he could never hurt you again. The way he hurt you and my niece or nephew."

"Yep, your sacred mission is to prevent people getting hurt," the girl dropped her eyes into her lap again, her face deadening into an anguish-covering mask, "And that's why you've just sanctioned your pet psycho to torture a living being."

"This living being, as you've termed him, is a werewolf who has killed a lot of people without thinking twice, just because he could," the older woman said defensively, "I bet he has never been shy of using his strength to hurt those are weaker, which is essentially any human. Why should I show him mercy?"

"Maybe because you don't care so much about who he might've hurt as about him rebelling against your rule," Kenzi replied reasonably, "Sensible but cold – just the way you've always been. Always after Nadia, that is."

"They took her from me," Lauren bent to grab her sister's wrist in a white-knuckle grip, "If they had just left us alone …"

But her thought remained unfinished as the door creaked open and a woman burst in, long dark hair fanning behind her – as ever full of life, eager to love and slightly sweaty from the work-out she had obviously been busy with before she got her summons.

"Lauren," Bo beamed a smile that never failed to tug at the blonde's heartstrings, "Bruce said you called me, something urgent and I didn't bother with a shower."

"It's OK," Lauren felt her heart melt into her stomach and had to remind herself that she was the master here and the succubus was her fae-toy, "I need your blood, Bo, and if you stick around I am ready to make it up to you afterwards."

"And that's my cue out," Kenzi shot out of the arm-chair with a too-much-information grimace, "I'll leave you to the blood-spilling and liquid-exchanging, ladies." And with a mocking half-bow the girl was out of the door, while her older sister rolled her eyes ceiling-wards.

"This girl is giving me an early case of grey hair," she smiled at her succubus.

"But you still love her," Bo returned with affection, "And she loves you back – you know, I can read these things off people."

"Oh, yes, you can do that, among all the other things," Lauren's smile took on a naughty edge, "And what can you read off me?"

For a few second's the smooth brow of the lovely succubus was furrowed in concentration before she offered a careful assessment of her ruler and her lover, "I think you're a passionate creature who is uncannily in control of her emotions but you have feelings for me, your aura is so much brighter when I am around, actually as bright as it ever gets. And that makes me so happy!"

In a rare unchecked move the blonde lunged forward and captured Bo's full mouth with hers but after a deep kiss released her heating-up lover and drew back, panting a little. "I'd so much rather take it to the bedroom but we need to draw your blood first," she said almost apologetically and motioned the other woman to a chair, crossing over to the medical kit on her desk.

Like a well-behaved child Bo took the offered seat and rolled up the sleeve of her top, exposing the veins in the crook of her elbow.

"You know it's not gonna hurt, just a tiny mosquito bite," Lauren cheered the brunette, leaning over her with a syringe in one hand and a cotton swab in the other. She examined the barely distinguishable pinpricks on the porcelain skin and sighed, "We need to juice you up right after – the traces from the previous procedure are still not completely healed."

"It doesn't matter so long as it makes you happy," Bo's smile didn't lose any of its wattage as the needle buried itself deep into her flesh and a thick dark red liquid ran up to fill the plastic container.

"While I am gone, you can slake your hunger with any of the guards and I'll see to you myself as soon as I am back," the doctor promised with a heavy promise in her tone extracting the needle and proceeding to mix up the blood with the other ingredients in a pre-prepared vial for her unconditional loyalty elixir.

"I need it to overcome a nasty enemy who has been barking at me for far too long," Lauren gave the explanation which was not demanded, driven by a sudden irrational compulsion to make herself understood, "You, my love, are my perfect weapon against all my enemies!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Lauren made her way downstairs to the basement with a feeling, she had to admit to herself what she would never say out loud within any fae's sensitive hearing range, falling short of glee or triumph. The wolf she was about to attend to had proven to be one of her best, most persistent opponents – a loyal supporter to the Valkyrie, a fierce protector to the Blood King. Loyalty and principle couldn't fail to inspire a certain respect in the human woman's heart and the glory of the species capable of taking the form of a magnificence animal fascinated her researcher's mind. The thought of turning the wolf into a cowering subservient dog was clearly not a joyful one but the Queen choked down the unaffordable emotion and steeled herself to what had to be done.

She entered the stone-walled corridor and followed its tortuous length to the barred cell, a syringe in hand, resolution at heart. The tableau that welcomed her, however, immediately gave rise to an anger mixed with delight – the prisoner was standing right in the middle of his cage, hackles raised, fangs bared, muzzle contorted in the menacing snarl that reverberated off the walls.

The Mesmer, positioned on the other side of the bars, was filling the air with colorful profanities and threats that sound empty seeing as Vex was certainly looking the more scared of the two fae.

"What is happening here?" Lauren asked, her tone arctic, though the development was an obvious one.

"The flea-infested son of a bitch shifted on me, your highness," the Mesmer executed a bow, looking up at her from under his dark, mussed-up fringe, "I barely started on … hm … interrogation ... "

"On torture, to call a spade a shovel," the doctor corrected him drily, "And surprise-surprise, the shifter shifted. Aren't you a genius of insight into a prisoner's heart, Vex."

"We had him hog-tied but he managed to work his bindings loose and skip free out of them in his smaller form," the Mesmer admitted unhappily, straightening up but head bent.

Lauren stepped closer to the bars, ignoring Vex's compulsively protective movement to stop her, and looked the growling animal over – the big fair-pelted wolf sported a few bloodied patches and his left front paw seemed to be curled up and off the ground to take any weight off the clearly damaged joint.

"I don't care how much fun you had time to extract or how much of it was thwarted, Mesmer," she annunciated coldly, torn between the desire to lash out at the petty sadist and the realization that she herself had encouraged him, "But I can't inject him until he is in his human form, you idiot! There's no telling how the serum would work on an animal!"

"I am so abjectly sorry, your Grace," the man was again bent almost double, the picture of fear-tinged remorse – their ruler was known to exact punishment for a lesser misdeed. Luckily for his hide, Lauren seemed to be much more pre-occupied with seeing her task through than with giving her subject a well-deserved comeuppance. She pressed her palms against the bars and caught the wolf's amber eyes with her own deep brown.

"That is clever of you, Dyson," she whispered knowing his pricked ears would effortlessly catch her words, "I didn't peg you for a brainy one before but you've surprised me. And yet, you've just bought yourself a little time to think over everything you're gonna lose soon enough. As soon as I'm back with some muscle and a pair of electrodes and you're forced back into your human form. You'll tell me everything – about Tamsin, about where I can find my prize – the Blood King and, moreover, you'll be happy to tell me, you'll be happy to serve me, you'll bring your former friends to me and rip anyone on your way to shreds. And all for me – the pathetic human you looked down your nose at!"

She smiled as she saw the powerless fury in the wolf's eyes and turned on her heels. "Follow me," she ordered the Mesmer, "I need a spare pair of hands to carry the generator down."

The clicking of the heels on the stone floor echoed down the corridor, accompanied with the heavier tread of the man's shoes and the wolf followed their exit, his ears at attention, his muzzle upturned. When the sound faded, he allowed himself to sit back on his haunches and rested his injured front paw. Then he gave his wounded side a tentative lick, out of instinct more than any hope to stop the bleeding. For a split second, the human part of his mind pushed forward an opposing idea – deepen the wound with a bite, let himself bleed out before his captor had a chance to make good on her promise, before she could turn him into a mindless traitor. After a short tug of war the wolf side prevailed, ruling out the unnatural option of suicide and proposing the more in-character way instead – fight, fight till the end, take out as many of them as he could, try and snatch a nice bite of the tyrant's flesh. Fight and hope against hope that he could stall the inevitable and gain some time for Tamsin to be alerted enough by his absence to relocate the Blood King.

He was still debating with himself as he heard a noise from the end of the corridor and tensed into a fighting stance, awaiting his tormentors, but the footfall on the floor was too light to be Bruce, the promised unbeatable muscle, or even the slender Lauren Lewis. Then a completely unfamiliar smell hit his flaring nostrils and the wolf bit down on the start of a snarl – someone tiny and stealthy, someone who had no business being there was sneaking down the corridor to his cell.

A girl came to a stumbling halt a foot away from the bars and tilted her dark-haired head to give him a once-over. Her huge transparent eyes seemed to take in every strand of matted hair, every gash on his skin, then they flicked over to the pile of discarded and ripped clothes he had had no time to take off before shifting.

"Shit! That's something I haven't thought of," she whispered to herself and approached the door to the cage. "Now steady, fluffy, I'm gonna open the cage with these," she jangled a set of keys in her right hand, "And you'll be out of here in a streak, provided you promise not to make a late dinner out of me – I'm ways too skinny anyways."

"Don't say a word, just nod if that's understood," she went on, a shade of a smile gracing her pale face, "Cos to say a word you'll have to shift into human and as your loincloth is out of commission, I am not thrilled at the prospect of your full frontal view."

The wolf behind the bars suddenly flopped back onto his haunches in an attempt to look as non-menacing as a full-grown predator only could and dropped his muzzle in an approximation of a nod. His eyes wore a guarded expression of doubt but he could not deduce a ploy behind the girl's actions and was leaning towards rolling with it – whatever his supposed savior had in mind could not be a fate worse than the one the blonde doctor had mapped out for him.

"Good boy," the girl muttered slightly relieved and slotted the key into the lock, "No theatrics, no unnecessary questions – it's so much easier to deal with animals, you know."

The well-oiled door opened without a squeak and the girl stepped back, unafraid and yet unwilling to put herself into the charging wolf's path.

"Go along the corridor in the opposite direction, there's a door leading into the backyard there – it's open, I've seen to it. It's an easier escape route, though there might be a couple of guards there. I don't care to know how you're gonna deal with them anyway," she hurriedly instructed as the wolf stepped through the open door, as if unsure of his next step, "Out and across the yard and over the wall. With so many willing to lay down their lives for her, Lauren is not really big on alarm systems or extra defenses. Hope your paw will carry you and good luck, fluffy!"

The shifter gave her another nod that, coupled with the pretty human expression in the glowing amber peepers, she correctly read as gratitude, and trotted with a slight limp in the designated direction. For a few seconds she stood listening to the soft pat of his paws on the stone and then went inside the cell and over to the heap of his clothing. She quickly rummaged through the ruins of his pants and shirt and jacket, fishing out a phone and a billfold that she hastily tucked in the deep pockets of her hoodie and was out of the cage and running towards the stairs that would lead her back into the house.

At the back door, unlocked and standing ajar as promised, the wolf halted and turned his ears back – he heard the soft sound of her sneakers against the floor, then the creak of a wooden staircase. He knew the young human had returned to the mansion, he knew her now – her scent, her voice, her face. He knew he had to see her again – in his human form – to do what he couldn't have done as a wolf – to say thank-you and to ask why.

**A/N: Thank you for all the feedback I've been getting on the story so far. The only promise is a flashback chapter that might explain a few things to come soon. And yes, this one is a dark one, no one is a babe, many have gone through hell. Still, going with my gut and pretty much winging it on this fic. **


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Kenzi was leaning against the wall, her tiny, ever-freezing body warmed up by the licking flames of the fire-place inches away. The only thing she really appreciated about this grand, tomb-like mansion of a house, that was more of a status thing that a home, was the open fire, especially when she could put it to another use. She flipped through the billfold, pocketing the notes and peering closely at the driving license – now she had a name, a birthdate and an address for her furry acquaintance of the eventful night, though she doubted the address was still valid and was fairly sure the birthdate was a fake by a couple of centuries – you never knew with the fae. She scrolled through the contact list on the cell – empty names without a face to put to for her – but grinned when she saw a number listed under Tammy. Could it be the vicious female fae Tamsin that struck fear even into her all-mighty sister's calculating heart? Another name, however, caught her eye and made her cringe with the sudden shot of pain – Hale.

As if on cue, the sound of the footsteps that could only belong to the bearer of the name made the girl turn away from the fire, her initial plan of chucking the wolf's incriminating possessions put on hold for the moment.

"My mistress," the soft, rich baritone called to her, "Are you tired? A glass of wine, perhaps?"

"I told you to call me Kenzi," she shrugged a shoulder – the times when the sight of this beautiful smiling face made her heart skip a beat and filled her with joy were long past, what it evoked now was a deep sadness and a sense of irretrievable loss.

"My Queen insists I call you mistress," Hale seemed genuinely upset by this but unable to question or oppose.

"Oh, I forgot, the Queen's orders override mine – fair enough, I am not the one with the scientific knowledge and a supernatural girl-friend with magic blood to turn everyone into moronic lackeys," Kenzi groused hollowly, knowing full well her words didn't really register in the man's enthralled brain. The blank stare Hale answered her with was unnecessary confirmation.

"Scratch that!" she sighed resignedly, "and bring me a glass while you're at it." She hesitated, watching the man pour the drink and fetch the glass with a happy smile. To ask him what she wanted to ask was dangerous – if Lauren chose to pick his brain he would sell her out in no time and with no realization of the act Still, she had to try, with the cell tucked into her pocket and burning a hole in her curious soul.

"I want you to try and remember your friends from before you came to serve my sister," she put a hand on his chest and effortlessly caught his full attention, "Entertain me. Someone I didn't know or hear of when we were together."

The young siren frowned in bafflement, "Someone? Could you be a bit more specific? I had a lot of friends I didn't introduce you to."

"Sure, cos that would be awkward – a human girl-friend for such a privileged fae like you were," Kenzi couldn't hold the bitterness out of her tone.

"And it would be dangerous for you, my mistress," Hale explained seriously, "Some of them simply wouldn't have approved, but some could've hurt you."

The girl gulped down half of her glass and the burning helped her to choke down the emotion. Catching her breath, she went on with her interrogation, careful not to mention the wolf directly.

"Tell me about those who were really dangerous," she finally came out with spurred by the recollection of the bared set of fangs in an unfriendly furry muzzle.

"Val, my sister, is easily the most dangerous," the siren smiled fondly, "Not by the nature of her powers but through her utter lack of motive in implementing them – so whimsical. And my childhood friend Glenn, who at my sixteenth birthday set fire to my birthday cake, unfortunately for the stripper who was inside it. Thanks Gods, Hella the water fairy was handy…"

For a heartbeat Kenzi had to tune out the litany and washed down the rest of her hurt with the rest of her wine but the next thing she heard almost caused her to spit it back.

"And my buddy from my police days – Dyson the wolf-shifter, that one could fight tooth and claw, and a fist if need be. He once KO'ed a human colleague in a supposedly friendly boxing round because the dude had had a case of wandering paws around a street girl in the holding cell," Hale recited from what remained of his memories, "We used to be kinda tight before he hooked up with a bitchy blonde called Tammy or something. And when I met you, he was less than supportive about it."

"Because I am just a worthless human weakling," Kenzi smiled at the irony. "Still not above being rescued by one," she added to herself.

"Because he said you would only get hurt," the siren corrected and the girl's unvoiced regret about saving the arrogant dog was no longer a regret.

"He was right," she stated and pushed her now empty glass at Hale, "A refill, s'il te plait, and Hale, if Lauren asks what we were talking about tonight, what are you gonna tell her?"

"That you asked me about my old friends," the siren replied sincerely striding over to the bar cabinet and returning with the requested drink.

"Exactly," Kenzi swallowed the ruby liquid in several angry gulps and looked up into his dark handsome face to order, "And now that I am fuzzy enough, take me to bed."

Lauren, her face an arctic mask of resent, was standing over the pile of clothes which were the only thing left of their prisoner. Vex burst back into the cell, sweating, panting and cowering all at the same time.

"He managed to escape through the back door, my Queen, that was somhoe left unlocked, turned human and climbed the fence," he reported, "Our unit is searching the area but apart from a few blood stain he hasn't left much behind."

"He is most probably galloping at the good 40 mph accorded to him by nature right now," the doctor stated drily, "And I don't rate your chances of recapturing him high, you imbeciles! What I am much more interested in is how he could've freed himself from the cage? It seems unbroken – simply open. Who opened it then? And who left the back door unlocked, come to think of it?"

The Mesmer was wringing his hands in front of himself, his head bowed so low his chin practically brushed his chest. "We will conduct an internal investigation and find whoever is responsible for such gross negligence," he vowed heatedly.

"We can start with you," Lauren's tone, though calm, carried a threat that sent chills down the fae's spine.

"I am a stupid useless Mesmer but I am loyal to you, my Queen," he wheezed, looking at her imploringly.

"I know," Lauren shook her head, her anger still brewing but changing direction, "But you should've hurt the wolf more, so that he couldn't have run."

"The door could've been negligence but the open cage is betrayal and there can be no traitors among my staff," she mused aloud, "There is only one person who could've got hold of the keys and has the free will to pull something like that. But why?"

The blonde squared her shoulders against another weight settling on her and flicked her wrist at Vex. "Go with the search unit," she commanded without much hope, "And I'll deal with the domestic problem."

**Author's Note: A biggest thanks to all the guests who left a review – sorry guys, can't reply in person. Trying to update asap though I am soon nearing a couple of forks in the road which might take some thinking over. Hope you're enjoying it anyways!**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Lauren raised a hand to knock on the heavy oak door of her sister's suite but thought better of such a well-mannered gesture and jerked the handle instead. She, nevertheless, had the good grace to make as much noise entering as possible and even scraped an out-of-place chair across the parquet with maximum racket. The bead partition separating Kenzi's small bedroom from the main room swayed and the tiny woman appeared, her lipstick smudged across her pale face like a clown's crooked grimace, a red kimono casually wrapped around her slim figure.

"What's up, Lorie?" she piped up with a small pout that made her older sister lose an iota of her resolve, "Night search? Random pee tests?"

"Where have you been over the last thirty-fifty minutes?" the blonde kept her voice neutral.

"Do you need details or suffice it to say we were getting quite steamy between the sheets with your little siren-gift, who is now sleeping it off rather noisely?" Kenzi cocked a brow, "I also wanted to ask the faexpert here if sirens should snore like that or he's got the sniffles coming."

"You do understand that lying is of no use," Lauren said softly, neatly disregarding the Kenzi-style not-really-a-question, "I can ask Hale and if your timing is off, I'll know it straight away – he won't lie to his Queen."

"Even for me, he won't," the younger girl shrugged her shoulders, "By the way, I've meant to ask why the Queen? You could've chosen any title – Empress, Tsarina, Goddess, Saint Lauren? Why something so unimaginative?"

"Because I am not the Ash or the Morrigan – I wanted a title with no reference to the divide the fae used to have and at the same time something clear-cut and unambiguous," the doctor leveled an even gaze at her sister but the snark had got through her veneer, hitting right the spot of her inner insecurity.

"Sure, if you had declared yourself President Lewis that might've been mistaken to mean they've chosen you as their ruler," Kenzi sneered.

"They don't get to choose, they get to venerate and obey me unconditionally and may I remind you that, as part of the fae world, so should you," Lauren felt suddenly drained, crushed by the enormous weight sitting on her shoulders, no small part of which was her little broken sister kicking against the only person who truly cared for her.

"Well, unlike the rest of the poor sods you've hollowed out, I am not your slave, I am human and I can't be vaccinated into swearing eternal love to you, I can't be compelled with Bo's blood," Kenzi replied with casual levity which her sister, so piqued and tired that she was running low on perceptiveness or reserve, took for real.

"You can't be compelled because you're immune," Lauren snapped and immediately bit back on her words but it was a second too late. Kenzi's head whipped up, her eyes ablaze, her jaw dropping.

"So, you've tried, you've tried your devilish concoction on humans, on me, on your own sister!" she spat out, wrapping the kimono tighter around herself with shaking hands.

"After Hale, after everything that happened with you, when I was waiting for you to heal and you wouldn't …" Lauren's voice was barely a whisper, "I was desperate, I thought if I gave you another purpose, redirect you… But the serum had no effect on you, for an as yet inexplicable reason."

"Which also means that you've tested it on other humans or how else would you know it has any effect on humans at all," the younger woman was all of a sudden a stony mask over a cold contempt.

"I did," Lauren admitted, too exhausted to deny anything, "Luise, my human affairs secretary is actually my thrall, so is the non-fae gardener."

"The one who brings you a fresh rose bouquet every morning," the dark-haired girl smirked, "And here was me thinking he simply, humanly fancied you. Bottom line, Laurie, no one loves you for who you are."

Lauren flinched as if slapped but recovered instantaneously to slip her own mask back in place.

"About an hour ago a prisoner escaped from a cell in the basement, a dangerous prisoner," she cut to the chase in her no-nonsense tone, "There is no way he could've done it himself, the unlocked back door might've been a case of negligence, but someone with a key opened his cell for him."

"And you've come to me cos I'm the only one on the inside both immune to your charms and with access to the key," Kenzi easily concluded, "What's my motive? Just curious."

"You were obviously cross with me for letting Vex torture the wolf, in fact, you are always cross with me. Motive? To spite me, another small act of rebellion, in the spirit of animal protection – take your pick," the doctor came closer to her sister and made her look up and into her eyes with a long finger under her chin, "What do you have to say in your defense? An alibi? Should we call Hale?"

Kenzi swatted the other woman's hand away from her face but her expression was not defiant, only cold and inscrutable.

"I already answered your question, if you choose to verify my words with your half-demented fae puppet, knock yourself out, Laurie," she said simply.

For the second time that evening the sisters' tiff was interrupted by the succubus as Bo knocked lightly on the door that was left ajar and made a tentative entrance.

"Lauren, my love, Bruce saw you heading here and I presumed I should interfere with some important news," Bo trapped the doctor's attention with her warm smile, "We found a staff member missing – a newly recruited assistant cook, a coyote shifter. I think he can be a spy infiltrating our ranks and the one who let the wolf escape."

"Impossible," the blonde cut her short, "If he was injected…"

"He was one of the batch who were not injected by you personally but by your medical assistant Cassie," Bo hurried with an explanation, "As you head of security I warned you it was not the best idea to delegate such a task but you were so tired and had so much on your plate that we gave it a go. And Cassie is a sweet girl with such a rare gift of seeing the future but as far as present is concerned, she is a bit … you know … out of it. I've just talked to her and she admitted that she might've injected one of the batch twice and overlooked another."

"Thus, we got ourselves an un-injected spy, right here in my own home," Lauren paled as the realization struck home, "And I've just accused my only sister of treason."

"Yeah, that was a sure-fire plan," the succubus nodded thoughtfully, "Even if the mole hadn't dug up much by way of intel, at the very least he sowed discord and got Tamsin's lieutenant off the hook."

Lauren was by her sister's side in a heartbeat, grabbing her small hands in hers, hugging her to herself. "I am so sorry, Kenz," the blonde half-sobbed into the girl's ear, "I am so sorry I doubted you even for a second."

"Yep, let's admit it – I made it so much easier for you to doubt me," Kenzi mumbled back, looping her own thin arms around her sister and catching the succubus's warm wink over Lauren's shoulders, "It's ok, Lauren, really. Now you owe me a car without a chauffeur and some cash to pad my wardrobe."

"Ever the opportunist," Bo chortled, with a hint of real affection for the younger girl and genuinely happy to see the sisters move past the terrible suspicion.

"What's wrong with the car I gave you?" Lauren smiled blinking back an unwelcome tear.

"As I've already told you, it comes with a chauffeur who reports back to you," Kenzi explained patiently, "Whatever I want you to know of my misdeeds might just as well be done in here."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

**A/N: Sorry about a short chapter, but it's the first part of a rather lengthy flashback and I promise to update very soon**. **Just trying to explain where Lauren is coming from**.

The door opened noiselessly and a tall dark-skinned man strode, confident and graceful, across the speckles extent of the laboratory. He stopped mere steps away from the woman, who was sitting, bent-backed and slouched over a microscope, so engrossed that she probably wouldn't hear the approach of a full-grown rhino.

"Doctor Lewis," the man called in a deep, low-pitched, husky voice and the woman, startled, jerked around, dropping a slide in the process. Her huge brown eyes, scared and disoriented, looked up into the arrogant, slightly smiling face and she immediately sprang up to her feet.

"I am sorry, I was working," she mumbled under her breath while a singeing thought was burning the insides of her mind – he shouldn't have strutted into her lab without as much as a knock or a warning cough, as if he was the master here. Instead of voicing that idea, she quickly reminded herself that he actually was it – the master of the lab, the owner of the doctor. Powerless to deny that, Lauren curled her fingers around the necklace that was choking her, as loose around her neck as it was – the necklace that marked her out to everyone in the know, everyone of significance, not as just any human piece of meat but a piece of the Ash's property.

"Such a sight for the sore eyes," the man drawled, his booming voice elusively mocking, "A servant who actually enjoys serving. Then, my next order will only play into your zeal. I've got a subject for you, doctor, a delectable subject I should say. A fae of a rare species that I need studied and analyzed and reported on asap and even sooner."

Lauren passed a tired hand over her brow and rubbed at her strained eyed with her fingertips. "My caseload is already challenging," she dared voice an objection, "And it's been a week since I had a chance of attending to Nadia."

Her voice, carrying a distinct note of despair, did little to perturb the Ash as he measured the slender woman with an intense stare. "Your… human, as I should make it clear, doctor, is not a priority, has never been, but my orders are," he declared with the confidence Lauren couldn't help but haltingly admire, "You'll deal with her once you're through with your assignments. Relax, she isn't going anywhere from her pod."

Mute with anger and indignation winning over the forced humility, Lauren went into an internal tirade about her human being the thing that had brought her into this servitude and about an ignorant haughty bastard that the Light fae had for a leader. Eloquent and sincere as her little pitch was, adorned with a few choice expressions and a terminology-heavy assessment of the Ash's mental faculties, it had to stay internalized and Lauren only nodded, her eyes scrutinizing the pristine floor.

With an economy of polite gesture that was so him, the Ash turned his broad back to the blonde and headed for the exit, throwing over his shoulder the last instruction, "I'll have one of my soldiers bring her over to you, doctor, and I am counting on speedy results. And mind it, she's a complete wildling, raised by humans, no self awareness, no sense of her true value, which is your task to assess and report straight to me and no one else."

Ten minutes later, after a door swung open again and a struggling female was unceremoniously pushed inside by a tall muscular fae Lauren had met before during a physical, the human doctor found her mind thrown into a new turmoil – her exhausted head stubbornly refused to dwell on Nadia's pale lifeless face or concentrate on the task at hand. Oh, no, her well-schooled, perfectly reasonable scientific self was not researching, it was admiring, feasting on every square inch of the view that presented itself to her screen-dried brown eyes. Lauren was not yet sure of the species or the significance of the young woman that was perching on the examination bed in front of her, luminous and glorious in her majestic, magnetic beauty, but the one thing the doctor knew was that her life, with Bo in it, was irredeemably thrown off its steady, doomed course.

Bo had proven a fascinating subject – a creature with fae physique and human mentality, sometimes more human than Lauren herself, compliant and defiant at the same time. Raised in a human family, without any knowledge of her true nature of her powers, the young succubus had been on the run for years, bouncing from town to town, leaving a trail of dead lovers behind, racked by guilt and unable to stop from feeding or to mitigate her murderous powers. Until one day she popped up on the Light-fae radar after an unfortunately conspicuous feed and was captured and brought up to the attention of the Ash.

What was his reasoning behind letting the anomaly live but keeping her prisoner under research was not immediately clear for Lauren but she followed her five-year policy of keeping the fae, who was holding her life and the life of her beloved in the palm of his hand, pleased and satisfied with her services and her docility.

From what the doctor could glean from her more talkative fae patents or from her infrequent sallies out of her lab and beyond the infrimary, the succubus was far from obedient or compliant, refusing to pledge to the Light or the Dark and recognize a ruler, breaking from her prison by seducing her guards, recaptured but un-chastened by the experience. But Bo kept coming to the lab, giving herself up meekly to the doctor's needles and tests, claiming she was as curious to know her own biology as the scientist was to study it, but both the women knew that there was another interest lurking just underneath the obvious.

"Why don't you try and succubus me stupid, so that I let you out of here?" Lauren asked once, her eyes glued to the computer screen where the latest bloodwork test was being processed, "Much easier than taking on your ogre guard and the reinforced metal door of your room."

"I don't like it easy, doctor," Bo smiled cockily, "I like it interesting. Succubus compulsion is piece of cake but it's not what I want. Besides, it wouldn't be very nice of me to leave you behind to take the rap for my escape."

Lauren's mind only half-engaged with the work, the woman, unused to either fae kindness or being hit on by such a level of walking hotness, felt a sudden constriction in her throat that she had to gulp down in order to speak up.

"Very noble of you," she finally managed out and added with genuine curiosity, "And what is it you want, Bo?"

"Someone who would love me without being succubused, someone I could love back without sucking the life out of," the brunette replied in a steady voice but it didn't take mind-reading powers to hear the decade-worth of pain and loneliness in it.

Right at that moment, admiration swirling inside her and her gaze drawn to the data showing on the screen, Lauren took the first-ever bold decision in her fae-slave career not to impart the research results to her all-mighty boss. The file that she submitted to the Ash contained a detailed study of the rare fae species, consistent with whatever was known about succubi so far, requesting an extension on the research and neatly hinting at a possible stunning break-through without giving any meat to it. Lauren's file struck just the right balance between intriguing and uninformative to elicit a consent to further the research. But the deeper the doctor delved into it, the less she felt like revealing the fact that her gorgeous supernatural patient with human principles possessed quite a few properties that went far beyond her succubus nature or that the bond that was being forged between them pushed the professional boundaries.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The first kiss they shared left them both breathless – Bo panting with the effort of holding back her powers, Lauren stunned into the realization that she couldn't keep any longer from emerging into the conscious part of her brain.

'You have to help me, Lauren," Bo begged, tears falling from her chocolate eyes, her fingers shy of brushing the other woman's skin, "I don't want to kill any more, never again."

And Lauren took this new assignment no less seriously than the Ash's orders, studying and learning, experimenting and eventually coming up with a stop-gap chemical measure. "It's like an inverted birth-control pill," she explained to Bo, showing her a small box with tablets, "Won't strip you of the ability, but will help to significantly reduce the probability. At least, that's the theory."

"So, we need the practice," the succubus grinned sweetly, "Who could I test it with?"

The possibilities flashed through the doctor's mind – asking the Ash to procure a human prisoner she knew he had been keeping in his dungeon, putting an innocent human at risk, offering herself up? The decision was not an easy one, not when she made her daily visit to the sealed room where Nadia had been lying, perched precariously between sleeping and dead. The decision was not an easy one but it was taken immediately after she conducted a regular check-up on a wolf shifter, working as a cop, one of the team who had captured the fugitive succubus.

Dyson, the wolf, was buttoning up his shirt, while Lauren was scribbling the data into his chart, and couldn't resist a little put-down.

"You're wasting your precious short human time, doctor," he sniped, "I haven't had a sick day since before you were born."

"And yet you look exhausted," Lauren remarked, a bit absent-mindedly, but was jerked from her professionalism when the man in front of her smirked smugly, "Not exhausted, just a bit drained, sex with a hot succubus would do it to you, not that you would know."

"A succubus? Bo?" the blonde woman stuttered, feeling stupid for not having thought of who her patient had been feeding on all this time.

"There are precious few succubi in the whole world, just about one this side of the border," Dyson finished straightening his vest and got up to his full 6'3 height, towering over the human with deliberate superiority, "She needs to feed, I have no objection. A win-win."

For a second Lauren considered driving her small but bony fist into his self-satisfied furry face but weighed her chances and kept that urge in check. Later that day, however, she offered herself up for the succubus-control pill test and was happy to see not a shadow of second thoughts on Bo's delicate face.

After a week of fruitful and vigorous testing Lauren was called to the Ash's audience room and accused of working on an unauthorized assignment. The doctor cringed with stupefying horror, thinking he was talking about Bo's blood research but as he boomed on she slightly relaxed.

"It is all part of the comprehensive study," she bleated humbly, doing her best inferior stoop for further effect, "studying the possibility of mitigating the succubus powers, providing you with the means of chemically restraining her. It never occurred to me there could be an objection."

The Ash seemed to like the idea of restraining Bo as much as he liked the general humility of the human's tone and pose and visibly mellowed.

"You always have a good explanation, doctor, and though any unauthorized testing, let alone, your intimate involvement in it, is a severely reprehensible thing, I am willing to show mercy and not to shut down your research," he declared self-importantly and motioned her to leave, "Your punishment shall come in a less drastic form."

Once out of the door Lauren bumped into the wolf-shifter wearing his usual supercilious look and a satisfied smirk. "Got rapped over the knuckles for touching what was not yours to touch, doctor?" he asked looking down at her.

"And you went running to snitch to the Ash out of petty jealousy?" Lauren's servility was running out for the day, "Bo taking a preference to a pathetic human over you must've rankled."

The man's face was genuinely surprised as her meaning sank in. "I am no snitch, it's the prerogative of the weak and the cowardly," he replied haughtily, "And don't flatter yourself, doctor, it's no preference, just having fun, temporarily."

Burning with hurt and humiliation, Lauren returned to the lab, comforting herself with at the very least saving both her experiment and her connection to Bo. She learnt of her less drastic punishment later that night when she came to visit Nadia and found the room with the cryogenic pod open and disactivated. Then and there, holding her now truly dead lover in her arms, Lauren swore that she would shake off her shackles and run, that she would be free again. Having positioned Nadia back into what was now her coffin and leaving the room she amended her vow and vouched that one day she would take revenge.

Another couple of days filled with hard work and rigorous research passed and Lauren learned to blunt the pain into an ignorable throbbing in her heart that let her function on and kept her resolve alive. Until the night the doctor crossed path with someone she thought she would never see again, not until she made good on her promise and was free.

Lauren heard the infirmary door slamming and turned to see a handsome tall dark-skinned man enter with an unconscious girl in his arms.

"Save her, doctor," he pleaded, laying down the tiny body onto a bed, the deathly pallor, the closed eyes, the ragged breathing and the blooded clothes all screaming 'brink of death' and Lauren dropped the clip-board she was clutching at. At first glance she recognized the dear little face, at second her professional eye latched onto a soft swell of a belly under the loose top.

Containing her own rising panic, Lauren yelled for an assistant, started stripping the view-obscuring garments, hooked the girl up to a monitor and an IV. She knew her own life was draining out of her with every drop of blood the girl was losing and she fought for both of them. That night she saved one life but failed to rescue the other.

After her patient was stabilized and out of the woods, Lauren went out into the corridor and looked into the anxious brown eyes of the fae who had brought the girl. He was twisting a soft fedora hat in his hands, his dark face almost grey with grief.

"She'll live," she said curtly, failing to scrape up a shred of sympathy for him.

"And the baby?" the man asked and allowed his full relief show when she shook her head slowly.

"The girl's human but don't you worry, doctor, I'll square it with the Ash," he said politely, "My family have some standing, lots of it, actually." It was clearly meant as an explanation not bragging and he managed to look more ashamed of it than proud.

"You brought a human here because the baby was half-fae, because it was yours?" the doctor asked and the man nodded, his gaze dropping to the tops of his expensive leather shoes.

"I love her, but the baby had no chance in my world," he whispered.

"You let them hurt her," Lauren stated what was not an accusation, just the last straw.

"I didn't know they'd go this far, I couldn't, they are my family …" the fae stumbled and backed towards the exit, "I'll come check on her later."

As he beat a hurried retreat, Lauren returned to her sister's bedside, "I let you down too, Kenzi," she said caressing the sweat-slicked forehead, "I wanted to protect you from them and I failed. But I'll set it right, I promise."

She left the infirmary to go back to her lab, to resume the work she knew now would build a safe world for her sister, would be her perfect revenge, her payback, her justice.

Soon enough she tested the serum she created from Bo's blood on some of her fae patients, then on Bo herself who from flirty and affectionate turned into doting and loyal. Then an inexplicable rapidly-spreading epidemics of fae flu, who nobody would have believed had been manufactured by a human genius, hit the fae population, Light and Dark alike. As luck would have it, the Ash's enslaved physician came through with a cure that was generously offered to everyone regardless of their allegiance. Lines of fae started flowing through doctor Lewis's lab getting their curing shots or their inoculation shots until one day Lauren walked into the stony hall to face the Ash surrounded by her little enthralled army. The only thing Lauren regretted as she saw her former owner being chained to the wall and locked for eternity was that Kenzi, still weak and convalescing couldn't see it.

Of course, there was some collateral damage, as Lauren was fully aware of the fact there might've been good, decent fae among her enthralled. And there were unpredictable hiccups, like some of the fae, too wary and experienced, like the arrogant wolf or the mutinous valkyrie slipping away and joining their forces in the attempt to bring down or at the very least to thwart the human tyrant. And there was the mysterious Blood King, mentions of whose unique powers Lauren found in the Ash's super secret archives, the one whose blood in Bo's veins made her so much more than a succubus.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The dimly lit storage room that was hastily converted into a makeshift infirmary was quickly steaming up with the spirits vapor and some hot breathing done by the two fae present. Dyson, who had barely had time to throw on a pair of jeans, was leaning against the desk strewn with blooded cotton wads and tiny medical bottles and watching Tamsin's long-fingered hands move across the injured patches of his body. You could never be sure with the valkyrie and he welcomed the pain that was dampening his desire down to a controllable tingling in the region that was currently not that far south from her touch.

"You weren't followed here, were you?" she asked, her tone level and matter-of-fact.

"I didn't come straight to the hideout, zigzagged around for a while until I was sure they were not on my trail," the wolf replied, "You can trust my hunter's nose on that".

"Right now it's not exactly the part of your hunter's anatomy I am concentrating on," Tamsin snorted dabbing at a gash in the wolf's side with a spirit-imbued wad and smirked when he winced, "Too rough for you, aren't I?"

"What's this modern obsession with disinfectants," Dyson grumbled in response, "I've survived centuries without it, just washing out the wound in the nearest bacteria-infested pond and taking a rest in a tavern with mead and wenches."

"Oh, I do like me an experienced man," the blonde cocked an eye-brow and finished dressing the wound swiftly and efficiently rather than gently and caringly, "But we'd better settle for the modern ways and though mead and a wench are on me, I honestly can't promise you much rest."

She looked over his shirtless torso with its footpaths of bruises and lacerations that were already closing and passed a deliberately provocative languid hand down his flank, fingers splayed, until the tips touched the lowest patch of uncovered skin just above his jeans belt. Her other hand went busily on the same south trajectory down front and hit a sensitive spot much faster. Dyson fought to retain some self-control but it was a losing battle at the best of times, and now, with him injured and exhausted, was clearly not the best time. His good arm slipped around the slim waist, cupping her firm, keather-clad behind as if of its own accord, the injured left hand, hanging limply in a sling, a much-deplored nuisance.

The valkyrie's nimble fingers were ruining Dyson's remains of concentration as well as shunting aside, if not banishing completely, whatever painful sensations were lurking in all the bruised and fractured parts of his body as the main focus shifted to his nether regions.

"So, how did you manage to escape from the well-guarded, practically unassailable Doctor's Dungeon?" Tamsin's tone was as smooth as were the unremitting attentions she was lavishing on the man.

"If I told you a strange human girl, probably from PETA, took me for a dog in distress, opened my cell and let me go, would you believe me?" Dyson muttered through a gasp, which was not brought on solely by the unexpected turn in their dialogue.

"I would say you fuck better than you joke," Tamsin's breathing was becoming more ragged, but her cold blue eyes were not thawing one iota.

"Then help me with my pants and I'll get more convincing," the wolf smirked mischievously and his right hand abandon's the woman's behind and lay on the buckle of her belt.

"Tell me a better story of your escape first," the valkyrie jerked her hand from inside his pants and was in no hurry to grant his request. "I am just checking in case the good doctor managed to inject you with some eternal loyalty," she remarked, leveling him with a piercing gaze, "I am not a great fan of sleeping with the enemy."

"And how am I supposed to prove that I'm still in full possession of myself?" the wolf asked, a bit baffled as the consideration hadn't occurred to him, but understanding her wariness.

"Trick promised us a thrall-detection spell but hasn't yet come through, he says he needs more research," Tamsin shrugged her shoulders, her hands now planted on his chest, hot and tantalizing but unmoving, "But you can start by saying out loud and with true feeling that Lauren is an usurper and a cold-hearted bitch with split ends, too much mascara and a bad choice in frilly blouses."

Dyson couldn't help a chortle escaping as he duly repeated the suggested line and tacked on, "And that's what makes you so different, Tammy, you don't have split ends or frilly blouses."

That shrewd observation cost him a punch in the yet unbruised part of his ribs, which could still qualify as a joking one as no bones were cracked, and he added soothingly, "Ok, let's just say I hope you were smart enough to relocate and hide the Blood King when you knew I had been captured and I am not even going to ask where he is now."

"Of course my first priority was to relocate him," the valkyrie scoffed, "You could've broken under torture or been enthralled into betraying us."

"And that's coming from the girl whose delicious ass I saved covering her retreat at the peril of my own life," the wolf sighed mock-devastated, "In fact, you could've been captured and turned into a traitor just as well."

"No, I couldn't," the woman said with a deadpan expression that might have been taken for serious or tongue-in-cheek with equal degrees of probability, "I wouldn't have been caught ensuring your escape. My hide is too precious and I would've got it out of the jam first."

Dyson wasn't sure if that admission was supposed to rankle but it didn't, he knew the stakes and knew a war necessity when he saw one. But he wasn't about to pass up a chance of pushing the blonde's buttons when presented with a chance. In a 'two-can-play-this-game' move he worked the buckle of Tamsin's pants loose and directed his one-handed efforts at the blonde's most vulnerable spot, making up for . Tamsin's face didn't betray a flinch but the ice in her eyes started to melt under the onslaught of century-honed skill.

"You're definitely getting more convincing by the second," she said huskily.

"And that's just my one hand," the wolf's deep voice was fast nearing sultry as he kept working at the woman, "Can an enemy feel that good? Can a Lauren-thrall be that aware of your needs?"

Tamsin shuddered as a finger slipped inside her and clutched at his shoulders for purchase, her clear-headedness giving way to emotions too strong to deny. Soon enough she was teetering on the brink, seconds away from her climax but the wolf, not exactly in a charitable mood, was not yet about to give in to her. His hand froze mid-thrust and he slowly retracted his finger, his gaze openly teasing as he disengaged from his lover and leaned back against the edge of the desk.

"Bastard!" the valkyrie hissed, panting in frustration, "Manipulative clit-tease!"

"They tied me up but I shifted and wriggled out of the human-sized binds. While they were thinking of a way to make me shift back and inject me, I took a good bite of a less careful guard – too big to be clever and strong enough to suffer from conceit and he dropped the keys without noticing," Dyson delivered in his best reporting voice, "He was bleeding from a ruptured vein, I was quicker and more determined. Are you satisfied, my warrior princess, or are you still suspicious of my escape?"

Her eyes heavily lidded and her breathing still unsteady, Tamsin slowly shook her head, "No, I am not suspicious but I am not satisfied either."

"Well, we could work on that," Dyson quickly covered the short distance between them and their hot breath mingled, "if you are ready to help me with my clothes…"

While Tamsin was giving short shrift to his jeans, he allowed a rapid surprised thought to flash through his mind, fast clouding with lust. Why did he edit his story to the point of lying? Why didn't he want to share the truth about the odd human girl with his lover and his commander? Why did his loyalties seem to be locked in a tug of war with his instincts?


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Tamsin re-did her hair, slicking the tousled blonde locks in place and straightened her jacket. She didn't feel quite right coming in to see her King straight after a session of heated banging on the desk but the matter was urgent.

She entered the low-ceilinged room with the usual barely suppressed shiver of awe that the royal fae managed to evoke in the millennia-old fearless and pretty much shameless valkyrie. The man, diminutive in stature but regal in bearing, tore his eyes off a thick tome he had been perusing and focused on the woman with deceptive mildness.

"Glad to see you, Tamsin. Any news on my old friend? Was he captured?" he asked with genuine concern as he picked himself up and approached to greet his guest.

"He was but now he's back, relatively unharmed and un-enthralled," the valkyrie duly reported, pitching her voice respectfully low and related the edited version of the events she had got from Dyson.

"Clever wolf!" the Blood King nodded his approval, "I was sure he would find a way not to become a traitor."

"And he was confident that I'd ensure your safety in any case," Tamsin remarked drily.

"That's what makes you two such a great team," the older fae smiled thinly, "And not just the occasional romp you're having in the storage room."

Tamsin couldn't help lowering her gaze for a second, like a child scolded by a well-meaning uncle.

"We're enjoying what we can and while we can," she muttered trying not to sound apologetic.

"No judging here," the Blood King spread his arms with the same avuncular smile but with a warning in his deep brown eyes, "As long as it isn't in the way off our cause."

"I can assure you it's not," the valkyrie said heatedly, "There are no feelings or commitments or any strings or rosy-tinted dreams. Just a couple of hours ago I left him behind to sure death or capture that may be worse than death – all because I knew I couldn't afford to risk my life and mind. I was ready to sacrifice my lover and my partner." A note of astonishment crept into her otherwise level tone as the realization of how true the words were sank in.

"I am not a heartless monster, I am the last hope of the fae," the valkyrie breathed out and saw the understanding and a certain empathy in the Blood King's eyes.

"It is a burden, Tamsin," he stated softly, "And I admire you for taking it onto your shoulders. I once had one of my own and I lost everyone I loved in the process. I wish I could tell you it won't happen to you but I can't."

"I'll do what I have to do," the woman jerked her chin up, "It's the matter of our race's survival."

"Then come and sit here, child," the ancient fae lowered himself back onto his favorite couch and patted the space next to him, "I think I finally found what we have been looking for."

"An antidote?" Tamsin flopped down next to him and peered onto the open page of the book with a squiggly lines of an unknown language and a picture of a plant, "Then we could protect all the yet un-enthralled!"

"Yes, an antidote," the Blood King nodded solemnly but his face did not reflect the woman's momentary joy, "I found a tip or two in my late wife's diaries, you know she was a succubus like Bo. And this unique encyclopedia of fae plants provided me with a final component. But as we both know nothing is as simple, there is a catch…"

Tamsin sighed, sagging against the cushion, "I knew there would be a catch. What is it? Side effects include severe nausea and a heightened libido for females and severe impotence for males?"

The old fae gave her a reproachful look and Tamsin's expression of levity morphed into a suitably concerned mien.

"I wish we could simply storm the castle and kill the evil bitch," she sighed again.

"Her army is greater than ours and hers are ready to fight for her till the last drop of their infected blood," the man remarked sadly, "And even if we manage to kill her, who knows what will happen to all the thralls. The thrall made of magic and science is unprecedented and unpredictable. They might die or commit suicide, samurai-style, on her grave …"

"I like 'her' and 'grave' in one sentence," the valkyrie interjected.

"I am not yet ready to burden my conscience with hundreds of fae lives, not again, and I don't wish that decision on you either," the Blood King went on not thrown off his train of thought, "We must first explore all the other avenues. The antidote I was talking about is quite possible but it can only be made from a finite resource. Which means we can only have just about one dose of it and it's up to us to use it wisely."

The next morning saw Dyson still beaten and exhausted and again in the immediate vicinity of the majestic and solemn residence of the Queen – the very place he had made such a hurried escape from mere 18 hours earlier. He had parked his car a block away and had reconnoitered the neighborhood and found a nice vantage point in a boarded-up ex-pharmacy diagonally across the street from what was to be the heavily guarded main entrance.

"You're crazy, old wolf!" he whispered to himself as he made full use of his sharp vision and a pair of military-issue binoculars to peer at the gates and straining to see beyond them, "Of course, no one in their right mind would expect me to turn up here after last night's events and, hence, I am relatively safe from discovery."

He wasn't exactly as articulate in trying to explain to himself the motivation behind coming to the viper's nest again, though, and the best he managed to come up with was a mixture of curiosity and a vague sense of a debt unpaid. Once he braced up to be completely honest with himself, another hour of observation later, he had to admit that he simply couldn't resist the urge to see the intriguing girl from last night again, to find out how and why she had saved him.

The hours were ticking by and the stake-out was not fruitful beyond a sighting of Vex the Mesmer hurrying out of the residence in grotesquely high heels and a sleeveless mesh T-shirt. For a considerable while the wolf entertained himself with theories on what kind of important and politically sensitive mission the Queen could have sent her lieutenant attired like that. But boredom hit him fast after he had exhausted his gutter mind on that and Dyson had to accept defeat.

"Let's face it, I am crouching on a garbage-strewn floor of a condemned property with binoculars tucked between the boards on the window, I am eating snack bars that are so not meat, I am peeing in a bottle and generally wasting my time, which could be better spend with Tamsin, on an assignment, looking for uninfected fae brave enough to join our cause …," he morosely informed a spider who had been his only company for the last couple of hours, "At worst, I could be recuperating, soaking my beaten bones in a hot bath. Instead I am talking to a spider."

"I'll give it another thirty minutes and then I am off and I swear never to tell anyone of this shameful misadventure," Dyson murmured, raised the binoculars to his eyes dispiritedly and startled leaned forward to re-adjust his line of vision.

What he saw through the lens was a car, a top-of-the-range nice little Volvo, girly by look and girly by driver as the long-haired person in the driving seat, the head barely touching the headrest was definitely a woman. The Volvo crawled through the opening gates and onto the street, heading Dyson's way. The binoculars, no longer required, hit the dusty floorboards as his enhanced eyes identified the girl in the driving seat, memory adding details to the blurred image. The wolf sprang to his feet, knees creaking in protest after a prolonged squat, rushed to the door and sprinted to his own car, easily beating the recent short-distance running record.

Years of police service had equipped him with a unique knowledge of the city layout and he intercepted the car where he knew he would and fell into an inconspicuous low-speed progress a couple of cars behind the Volvo. Keeping his pursuit unobtrusive became more difficult as the girl turned into a quieter part of the city and the shifter had to widen the gap between them not to be spotted and hope that she would return to a more populated district that would allow for more cover.

However, the Volvo soon pulled over to the curb and the girl got out, a bunch of what looked like yellow field flowers clutched in her hand. She made her way across the road, past the rusty metal fence and onto a plot of land marked with old trees, tombstones and grave plaques, her step without a spring to it and heavy – too heavy for such a slight creature – and chillingly confident, as if she knew her way around the cemetery all too well.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Dyson passed her at a near-crawl and parked his car as soon as he rounded the first bend in the road. He made his way back on foot, at a run that made every stitch in his body burn anew and with a vengeance and stopped by the now empty Volvo. He poked his head through the nonchalantly wound-down window and inhaled, taking the light scent deep into his lungs, the scent he recognized from his incarceration misadventure, and the scent he had no difficulty following into the depth of the cemetery until he spotted the short figure stooped over a headstone.

The girl wasn't wearing black – skin-tight gray leather pants and a blue top could hardly pass for widow's weeds but there was something irrefutably tragic about her hunched shoulders, her deflated posture, her pallid face stilled into a tight mask of pain. Her huge crystalline eyes seemed almost transparent when ringed with a smudged contour of eyeliner and the wolf nearly forgot to be stealthy, caught in their silver depth. She squatted down to put the flowers onto the ground and even from a distance Dyson could see her hands shaking, could smell salt on the tepid breeze.

He had barely had time to duck behind a crumbling tall tombstone when she suddenly turned round and retraced her steps at a trot. She passed a couple of feet away from him and the whiff of salt became more distinct. "Whose grave could it be?" the wolf wondered, "A parent? A lover?" He followed her retreating back with his eyes and after a short hesitation, unable to resist the pull of curiosity, made a dash for the grave marked out by the fresh flowers.

The stone, however, turned out to be disappointing in its uninformative simplicity. _Sasha Malikov_ was the name carved into it with the last year as the only date reference. No grand words, no loving memories, no mourning family mentioned. Dyson, who would've never figured himself for the sensitive type, was towering over the small stone, his nerve endings jangling, wrapped up in the sensation, an uncanny chill running up and down his spine. He felt like an intruder, like a callous boot tramping down a tender flower. "May your soul rest in peace," he muttered under his breath backing slowly away from the grave, then turned and rushed to the exit from the cemetery.

To his surprise, the girl's car was still there and she was inside, her arms on the steering wheel, her head cushioned on them, as if she were taking a recuperative break after a heart-rending experience, which she most probably was. That was neither the time nor the place for whatever approach Dyson might have in mind and, with a respectfully bowed head, he passed her by and went to retrieve his own car.

He followed the Volvo at a considerable distance, not exactly sure of his purpose, to a seedy little bar downtown, where she parked without a thought to the legality of the chosen spot and went inside. Out of all the possibilities the wolf settled for the only one that gave him a chance to see those tragically magnetic eyes again and leaving his own car he made his way into the unrespectably-looking watering-hole.

Lauren rubbed her heavily strained eyes and rolled the tiredness out of her shoulders. Two small warm hands planted themselves onto the white expanse of her lab coat and started on a slow finger-tip massage.

"You look wiped, my love," the succubus whispered tenderly, her lips almost touching the crown of the blonde head.

"I am," Lauren smiled, feeling her exhaustion seeping away under the strong confident fingers, "But it's so much better once you're by my side."

"Your research," the brunette asked peering over the white-clad shoulder onto the screen, "It's about my blood again? Do you need more of it?"

"No-no," the doctor replied hastily, "I can't draw any more for a couple of days, we need to give you time to recuperate, honey. I am actually worried about the effect your donoring might have on your health."

"Well, you know how to reboot my system, don't you," Bo's lips curled up with a mischievous intent and Lauren couldn't help a warm wet feeling spreading in the pit of her stomach and moving down.

"I am anyways looking for an alternative source, darling," she said softly, saving and shutting the document and turning on the swivel chair to face her lover.

"You said succubi are virtually extinct," the brunette shook her head with a slight frown.

"It is unfortunately so, besides, your unique properties are only partly due to your succubus nature," the blonde looped an arm around the other woman's waist and pressed her face against her stomach, "I am more interested in finding the other bloodline – the elusive Blood King. The magic in his veins might well be the answer."

"The legendary fae you found out about from the Ash's archives?" the succubus asked with bright levity.

"Yes, he used to be a prominent ruler of your kind who used the power of his blood to forge a peace between the warring factions of fae and stop the Great War, at the expense of creating a divide though," Lauren's voice was muffled by the soft fabric of Bo's top but she was unwilling to peel herself from its enticing warmth.

"From what I've found he might be your maternal grandfather, Bo," the doctor confided and suddenly hoped the succubus hadn't caught it.

But Bo picked on those words immediately and was visibly rattled. "You found someone of my family?!" she cried out, her brown eyes lighting up with glee, "My grandpa?"

"I haven't found him, I just found out of him," Lauren sat back and looked up into her lover's ecstatic face, "But my people are searching for him, have been for quite a long time. If that stubborn wolf hadn't escaped yesterday, I could've squeezed a lead out of him."

"I shouldn't have trusted Vex with him," Bo said regretfully and her expression immediately shifted to a wary one. "You haven't been searching for him for my sake, have you, Lori?" she asked what was more of a statement, a crease marring her smooth brow, "You need him for his blood."

"A bit of both," Lauren prevaricated, "I need his blood for both our sakes, I need my serum and I don't want to drain you, my love."

"You want to drain my grandfather instead," Bo remarked levelly, "But he, unlike me, might not be able to restore so quickly. You can kill him."

"I'll do my doctor's best not to," Lauren smiled thinly.

"He is my family," the succubus almost pleaded.

"And I am your Queen," Lauren rose sharply from her chair to her full height and caught the brown eyes with the most commanding stare she had developed so far, "Are you second-guessing my direct orders?"

"You are my love," Bo whispered never flinching, "And I am not supposed to always like your orders."

Lauren felt a chill creeping down her spine. The succubus was reacting not like any enthralled fae should have, she was showing the free will and the judgment of her own when she was supposed to be cowering before her Queen and taking her every word as unquestionable order.

"Impossible!" a panicked thought jolted Lauren. "But Bo is an impossible fae," her heart reminded her with a touch of pride. "Could she be developing a resistance to the thrall?" her reasoning mind inquired.

The brunette's eyes were already glistening, her expression acquiring a guilty puppy look as she circled Lauren's waist with her arms and put her head down onto her shoulder. "I am sorry," the succubus murmured, "You are my Queen, my everything, you know better what we should do and I will do it for you."

Lauren felt an iron grip relaxing on her startled heart – her lovely enthralled succubus was back to her submissive version so quickly that the doctor had to ask herself if she was reading too much rebellion into a chance phrase. The blonde hugged the other woman all the way back, reveling in the softness of her ample breasts against her own body, returning the heat and the tenderness she was receiving.

"I know all there is to know about the science of this, but the magic of it still eludes me," Lauren admitted out loud, "I don't know why my own sister is immune to the serum when there's absolutely no scientific explanation to it, no abnormalities in her system. And now I might be facing another enigma. I need the Blood King to understand the part that I cannot understand, I don't want to hurt him, Bo, not unless I have to."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Dyson curtly ordered a pint of the cheap beer that seemed to constitute the staple of the regulars' diet and took up a half-turned position at the farther end of the counter, comfortably uncovered by any of the overhead lights, looking around with pretend idleness. The girl who he had been following had taken a seat at one of the corner tables, asked for a vodka and was casting worried glances at her wrist watch, obviously waiting not only for her order to be brought. She seemed both out of place and unobtrusive at the bar, like someone who had seen their fair share of seedy haunts but would much rather be at a public library at the moment. The wolf was watching her beautiful profile framed by the long dark hair, her face composed and unreadable while her little fingers, fidgeting with her cell, were the only giveaway of her nerves.

A less than squeaky clean glass was flopped in front of him by the bar-tender who was clearly not afre big tips and he was forced to take a sip of the murky liquid to keep up the appearances. "A couple of centuries ago I would've let out the publican's guts for serving pig-swill like that," the wolf told himself grimly but maintained a civilized face through the next careful mouthful, all the while keeping his eyes glued to the girl over the rim of his glass. A rather childish impetus to stroll over and claim both the unoccupied seat next to her and a bit of her attention overtook him and Dyson almost smiled. "She can't recognize the wolf she had freed in the human clothes and I, at the very least, could look into her mesmerizing huge eyes," he continued his inner monologue.

Still on the fence as to his further course of action the wolf gulped down some more of his beer and the acrid taste strengthened his grip on reality. "That's before she brands me a weirdo or a stalker or both and runs off after kneeing me in the nuts," he told himself sensibly, "Unless I thank her for saving me straight away and offer to pay for her drink in gratitude. And then she can take exception to my socializing style and run off screaming after distracting me with some damage to my sensitive parts."

Dyson frowned as it hit home that tracking the girl down was, in fact, much easier than coming up with a less than lame chat-line for her. The moment was, any way, lost as a short broad-shouldered fair-haired man lowered himself into the vacant seat opposite the girl with a grin on his face. The accent when he started speaking was a dead giveaway even if his round face with high cheekbones wasn't.

"_Privyet_, my dear cousin," he drawled in a wooden version of English that the wolf's enhanced ears picked easily and recognized from his days of working a Russian people trafficking chain with Hale a couple of years ago.

"Any news, Dima?" the girl asked in a no-nonsense manner her cold tone mismatched with the soft features of her young face but reinforced with the arctic look of her light eyes, "Any merchandise for me?"

"The money?" the man she had called Dima asked back never losing his grin.

The girl's hand patted a purse lying on the table next to her and looking distinctly stuffed. The man's hand in its turn slipped inside his loosely–fitting jacket and Dyson tensed despite himself, ready to streak across the distance between them if anything remotely threatening showed up in Dima's hand. The Russian man never knew how close to a nasty brush with a moody wolf he had come as he produced a small plastic tube of pills.

"Aren't you stocking up on all kinds of weapon?" Dima inquired, "A gun last week, sleeping pills today, next thing you'll ask me for a sword."

"I've already got one," the girl swiftly pocketed the tube and kept questioning as Dyson tensed again as her next words raised a flaming red flag, "Any information on the doctor?"

"Doctor Isaac Taft is still under the radar," Dima admitted melancholically, "But I am working, Kenzi."

"False alarm, not _that_ doctor," Dyson remarked to himself, "And she is Kenzi."

"Wok faster," the girl who now had a name snapped at her cousin, "or I might start considering tapping other sources."

"Come on, Kenzi," the man whined, "I tracked him to his last job but three years ago he just disappeared, I've already checked his relatives ad his ex-wife and kid in Scarborough and … "

"I've given you half of this info," the girl chastised him, "And you haven't exactly been busting your hump on this one ever since. Up your game, Dima, or I'll find someone faster for the job. _Ponyal_?"

"You knew he used to work with our Lora?" the Russian suddenly asked in a grin-free, low voice and for the first time in their convo Kenzi was the one to look down and lose the upper hand.

"Lora worked at the same university, same lab, they were colleagues, rumors say they were lovers," Dima tacked on, still in a serious, almost sympathetic tone.

"I know they worked together," Kenzi finally managed out, "She told me he was the most brilliant scientist she had ever met, maybe even as brilliant as she … as she was."

"That's why you're interested in him? You think he can help you find Lora?" the man kept asking, eagerly watching the play of emotions for a few seconds allowed on the pale face.

"Yes, Dima," Kenzi looked up after a micro meltdown, her features solidifying into resolve, her voice confident again, "I think he can help me get my only sister back. So, move your ass and make it happen for me and tehn you'll have all the crispy-crispy notes I've promised for your assistance. And in the meanwhile I have a new little assignment for you. Another man to track, I've got a name and an address but I don't think he uses both or either of those now. He used to be a cop, 15th division though … "

And there Dyson, who had been listening to the family exchanges avidly, felt a dizziness that he chose to put down to his recent blood loss. The doubt segued into certainty as Kenzi recited his details to the Russian.

"He looks late thirties, blond, curly, blue eyes, kinda handsome, ok, scratch the kinda, really handsome," she went on with his description and the wolf was dangerously close to blushing, "Can't say from the photo for sure, but I should think tall and athletic."

"You haven't seen him?" Dima asked leisurely and Kenzi shook her head. "Not really," she almost smiled at the irony that was lost on her collocutor, "Get that hacker friend of yours to work on the police database, check the address but I wouldn't hope for much. Call me as soon as you find anything."

"And that," she slipped a wad of notes from her purse towards the man who took hold of it with the practiced speed straining to defy a policeman's eye, "is for the meds." 

Dima beamed another satisfied grin, rose from the seat, attempted to plant a wet kiss on the girl's cheek that she angrily brushed off and left the bar. Dyson hurriedly turned away and hid his face in his half-empty glass – he had been a self-assured fool to feel safe from detection and to have completely forgotten about the bill-fold and the ID and the cell he had left behind in his clothes. So, this Kenzi girl was looking for him the same way he was looking for her. That discovery didn't exactly encourage him to act on the impulse he had entertained to go up to her and talk to her, seeing as playing the mysterious stranger was now out of the question.

Dyson was not really worried about the Russian guy looking into whatever trail he might have left at the cop shop or at his last known address but watching Kenzi was becoming increasingly difficult if she was armed with his mug shot. On the other hand, her search for him, as well as a couple of names she had dropped, was an added incentive not to lose sight of the walking 5 feet 3 enigma.

While he was processing the recently acquired information, the girl downed the finally served vodka shot, flipped a crumpled bill on the table and got up from her seat without as much as a waver. From the convenient shade the wolf observed her leave the bar and was on the verge of calling for a timeout until he could think through his next move. The timeout idea, however, was a short-lived idea as he saw a figure in baggy pants and lumpy jacket with a baseball cap low over the forehead follow Kenzi out. Though Dyson couldn't really see the person's face and only registered him when his back was already making a hurried exit after the young human, he knew the smell that hit him – the smell of a fellow fae.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Kenzi hunched her shoulders against the sharp wind and strode down the street towards the spot where she had left her car. Several years ago a night out on the town, a fancy car and a sizeable wad of cash in her pocket would have meant infinite opportunities, but now the only emotion heating up the night for her seemed to be the muted sense of purpose and a post-vodka warmth spreading in her stomach.

Yet, Kenzi had to admit to herself that the deadness in her soul seemed to be a tiny bit livened up, whether by the feeling of being out and unsupervised or from a sparkle of excitement that the whole wolf-business was giving her.

She knew why she had let him go – revolted by the idea of having a person, an animal tortured in a filthy cage right underneath her feet, prodded on by the thought that every next slave was another nail in her sister's coffin. She didn't, however, know why she had just instructed Dima to find the man she saved.

"It certainly can't be just because I want to see him again or see him out of his wolf skin. Kenzi doesn't do this kind of schmaltzy, fall-for-the-hot-guy under extreme circumstances thing any more," she assured herself, "But he might be instrumental in my cause."

"And he might well want to kill Lori," she added immediately, "So how do I get him to fight our joint battle but by my rules?"

Wrapped up in her complicated musings, she didn't hear the footsteps until they were right behind her and a heavy hand landed on her shoulder jerking her around.

"Bruce?!" she cried out indignantly going by the weight of the muscled limb and the force of the spin given to her, "Did Lauren tell you to follow me? What a two-faced controlling …"

But the proper epithet for a promise-breaking sibling trailed off as Kenzi looked up into the face of a man, who, though bearing a pronounced resemblance to the giant fae in Lauren's service, was obviously a complete stranger with a cold predatory glint in his squinting eye.

"Steve, not Bruce," the man muttered, sounding as if he had already been taken for Bruce before and was much less than amused by it. His other huge hand took a grip of the girl's slim neck and gave it a tentative squeeze, "Bruce died and so will you."

Kenzi's wide open eyes did not reflect fear but a profound resentment at going in this way – in a dirty side street with a sweaty paw wrapped around her neck – and at the point in her life when she still had a huge, hanging loose end to tie.

"Wrong, Bruce is alive," she wheezed pushing air beyond the thick fingers on her larynx.

"He's as good as dead to me," the man hissed back, his eyes distinctly bloodshot but his hand momentarily relaxing, "She took my brother and turned him into a mindless puppet."

"Oh, I can spot the family resemblance," the girl rattled out, "and not like he was a mindful personality before."

"Poor choice of words," she chided herself mentally as the fingers curled tighter again.

"She said to get you alive but I much rather prefer you dead," the fae leaned to exhale the words into the girl's face and she flinched not so much from the threat as from his fetid breath.

Seconds before the brute strength could crush Kenzi's throat, a strength an iota greater or simply more focused ripped his hand from the girl and another body inserted itself between the fae attacker and his tiny prey. As if mesmerized, Kenzi, who had staggered back a few steps, was watching the fight that was short but spectacular as the tall figure of a man took Steve down with precise, honed hits and blows until the giant slumped on the ground in a huge heap of quaking damaged muscle. An arm rose for the final strike and Kenzi saw the glistening of claws in the gathering dark, knew immediately who it meant, what it meant. "Don't," she rasped out and repeated with more stress and volume, "Don't kill him!"

The man turned to face her and his eyes glowing yellow faded to blue. "Why would you ask to spare him?" he asked, curt and weirdly polite at the same time, "He wanted to kill you".

"Someone sent him after me," the girl explained, words coming out unsteady from her bruised throat, "Besides, he might have had a good reason."

Conceding her point, the man bent down and lifted the half-conscious fae off the ground.

"You heard the lady – who sent you?" he inquired, the tone level but the menace reinforced by the flash of amber in his gaze and a fine set of claws pressed to the other's carotid.

"My mistress," the fallen fae stumbled out.

"There are so many of them these days," the wolf's tone was getting impatient and the tip of a claw penetrating the skin.

"Evony, my dark Morrigan," Steve spat out in a hurry, clearly unwilling to play the loyal hero.

"What does she want with the human?" Dyson kept on interrogating but the fae only shook his head.

"I swear I have no idea, she just told me where to find her and to take her," he murmured nasally and was spared further explaining as a new smell wafted onto the scene – the delicate jasmine with a trace of fresh nail polish that made Dyson punch his captive out and spin round to face the new menace.

"Fleurette," he drawled instilling the name with derision, "Sorry, can't call you the Morrigan any longer or claim to be happy to meet you. Wait, not actually sorry."

"Easy on the eye as you are, dog without a master, I am below thrilled myself," the woman made her slow hip-wagging way to stand by her defeated henchman. Instinctively Kenzi moved to take position behind the wolf's broad back.

"I didn't tell the stupid piece of meat to kill her," the woman flicked her dark curls and beamed what would have been a seductive smile had it not be so predatory, "I want her alive and I want her now."

"Why?" the wolf asked what was his question of the night with open curiosity.

"Because I need her and I am stronger and older than you are, dumb wolf," Evony sighed as if chagrined by his slow-witted lack of grasp of the situation.

"Older you might be, crow feet showing, but I am ready to argue the first point," the man replied without moving an inch.

"You're obviously hurt," the woman nodded to the wolf's arm pressed against his side and went on ticking off the points on her fingers, "You've just expended your strength on my moronic lackey protecting a human you know nothing about. And I am so charged to melt you into a puddle."

This time the attempt at her life and freedom was slow-moving enough for Kenzi to get her purse open and fish around inside but inquisitiveness overwhelmed for a few more seconds the natural survival imperative and she paused waiting for the man's answer, breath held, gun poised.

"Tams says you've got too lazy and too slow over the years, Fleurette," Dyson growled not budging, his claws extending again, "I won't rate you chances that high. One touch is all it takes for both of us and I have longer arms."

Fury lit up the huge brown eyes but caution won as the ancient powerful woman took a step back and made a show of inspecting her nails.

"I'll have my chance soon enough," she stated, "And I'll have my girl without having to ruin my manicure."

As the slim figure swaggered off scene, the gun disappeared back into the purse bare seconds before Kenzi was lazered with the shrewd blue of her rescuer.

"What the hell was that about?" the wolf barked out, "Why does everyone want a piece of you as if you're a succubus? How are you involved with the fae? And why don't you look afraid to die, human girl?"

"And why did you trot to my rescue?" Kenzi shot back, gathering her wits.

"Don't like unpaid debts," Dyson muttered, not sure if the girl recognized him from the photo or from the snarling clawed animal she had seen.

"I saved you, you saved me, let's call it quits," Kenzi shrugged and straightened her clothes with the air of someone ready to call it a night.

"You were looking for me – I heard you talking to that Russian informant of yours," the wolf didn't seem willing to let her go yet.

"And you were obviously spying on me," the girl replied in kind, "Don't think you usually hang out in human bars. So, as far as we have established that we have been looking for each other and that I am not afraid to die, you can stop looking intimidating and I can drop my it's-too-late-and-i-want-to-go-home act and talk for real."


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Tamsin listened to Trick's side of the phone conversation with uncharacteristic patience and only allowed herself a questioning gaze as soon as the man finished the call.

"The necessary herbal component will be in town tomorrow, you'll send someone trusted to pick it up from the bus station," the Blood King instructed, "I'll cook the antidote soon enough. If my calculations are correct, we'll have just enough for two doses."

"Two?" the blonde's brows shot up in surprised relief, "That means I can afford an assistant."

"Or we can afford a trial run before we use the antidote on you, to make sure it works," the older fae amended judiciously, "It's your risk and your call, Tamsin. What do you need more? A helping hand inside or a certainty that you will not get enthralled on your mission? Or in the best-case scenario, both?"

The valkyrie's hesitation was short-lived. "I'm used to acting solo but if your magic is faulty, I'll be lost to the cause and forever a slave," she summed up her options, "So, a trial run, but that means we'll need someone to inject with an antidote, then set up for a Lauren injection and then we'll have to check the effect. That's a complicated prologue to our play and, possibly, one more good fae to lose."

"I told you there is a price to pay. A commander has to risk soldiers to win," the royal fae reminded her with a sad knowing smile and got practical, "So we need someone of roughly the same strength and the same age as you, someone who would be captured and not killed in the process, someone who Lauren is so happy to catch and enthrall asap that she won't be too suspicious or look too deep into the circumstances. And someone who, if the antidote proves its worth, will be a valuable assistant for you."

Tamsin felt a shiver of unease as it hit her just how much one particular fae of her close acquaintance fitted the description and her green eyes delved into the deep brown of the man who had been the all-powerful ruler of her kind when she was just a juvenile valkyrie with more ambition than experience.

"Anyone in mind?" she asked forcing indifference into her voice and felt her heart unclench after it had seemed to stop beating for a couple of seconds as the Blood King shook his head slowly. "I'll leave the choice to you," he replied, the same sad knowing smile curling his lip, "But think about someone whose loss would be still beneficial to our cause were we to lose him to the experiment."

Having quashed the itch to ask just what exactly Trick had meant with his last instructions, the valkyrie returned to her modest quarters after taking all precaution to check for a tail and uninvited visitors and feeling optimistic, exhausted and quite conflicted. The news that the Blood King had brought to her was promising – the antidote just the trick of the Trojan horse variety that could tip the scales in favour of the free fae, as they had come to call those still unenthralled by the genius human. She ran through the reasons for the guinea pig again, just to quell the subdued pangs of conscience that were still prickling her sensitivities.

"All and every fae at my side know the danger they court and will gladly risk their lives to rid our people of the tyrant," she announced to her scowling reflection in the bathroom mirror. "But are they ready to risk their minds and souls? Exactly what they are fighting so hard to save, even if at the cost of their lives?" the reflection threw back at her.

"I have to talk to Dyson about that, it doesn't have to be solely my decision, my burden," the blonde turned on the hot water and the mirror started to steam up, hiding the anguished worn-out woman behind the polished glass. "Yes, Dyson would not go amiss right now," she chucked to herself tossing her clothes off and getting into the filling tub, "Tams, dear, you're getting old and getting soft. Since then do you need anyone to make your decisions or make your time enjoyable?"

They found themselves on a bench in the park, deciding against public places by tacit agreement. Kenzi shivered as a cooling night wind swept around her tiny form and Dyson fought an urge to gather her into his arms and press her to his wolf-hot body. "Her frailty plays right into my protective instinct," he told himself sternly, keeping his arms pressed firmly to his sides, but had to be honest enough with himself to tack on a "who am I kidding?" when the image of enormous silvery eyes shining in the beautiful face and framed by the raven dark hair was pushed to the forefront of his mind.

"What are you doing at the doctor's house?" he started the ball rolling, choosing the medical title over some less favourable description carefully, not sure of his footing.

"I am living there," the girl answered simply, looking straight ahead at the pebbled path.

"You are human and you're not enthralled, yet you seem to be in the know about the fae and about the overhaul in the fae world," the wolf probed again.

"I am Lauren's sister and I can't be enthralled," Kenzi stated unemotionally, "and you can turn into a wolf who has been gunning to rip out my only family's throat for long enough."

"And yet you saved me," Dyson managed out once he got over the shock of her revelation that easily the Morrigan's recent interest in the human, "And then you looked for me."

"Every other creature she enslaves kills her a little bit more – I could prevent it and I did. Besides, I like animals," the girl shrugged her shoulders, "Later when I found your wallet I thought that I could find you and try and get you to reconsider your throat-ripping intentions regarding Lori."

Dyson hand clasped around the thin forearm and spun the girl halfway round to face him. Kenzi looked calmly at the bared elongated fangs and right into the blazing amber eyes with the same impassiveness she had treated the luckless Steve to.

"Not your brightest plan, human," the wolf snarled, "Lauren Lewis, your family or not, will pay for everything."

"Yes, she's done a lot," Kenzi admitted levelly, "she's killed and enslaved fae… Who killed her love and enslaved and used and humiliated her and … her sister." She gulped at the last words – the first sign of emotion she had allowed since she had left the bar.

The fangs retracted, the eyes reverted to their human blue as the shifter absorbed the truth in her words. "She has been mistreated by my kind," he slowly admitted but went no further with that, unable or unwilling to assess the value of one human's life and freedom against so many fae's.

"You are not afraid to die, are you?" the wolf's focus shifted to the girl still in his iron grip.

He slowly released her arm and the thought that his fingers might have left bruises on the tender pale skin made his hand fist up and press painfully against his half-healed side inside his jacket, a spike of pain giving him a perverse pleasure at this particular piece of his just desserts served to himself.

"Not like I have a lot to live for – nothing actually, apart from the slim chance that my only sister can still be saved, saved from herself as much as from you, vengeful fae guys," she said serenely and the question about the gravestone with a heart-wrenchingly short inscription was dangerously close to being asked but Dyson bit it back.

Once free of the wolf's paw, Kenzi felt cold again and couldn't help another shiver.

"Either we relocate to somewhere warmer or you take my jacket," the man growled at her side and the piece of garment slid over her shoulders.

"I don't expect you to know a decent human bar around here, so I'll take the jacket," the girl muttered snuggling into the fabric, still warm and smelling of his cologne.

"How are you planning to save the doctor?" he asked.

"Isaac Taft," she replied, "You were eavesdropping, you heard me talking of him. If one genius could come up with the way to start this mess, maybe another can come up with the way to unmess it. I've been storing whatever I could get my hands on – samples, research data. Maybe he can work on that and find an antidote."

"Why do you need me?" the wolf tried to catch her eye and wondered he sounded almost

"I don't think it's a solo mission and Dima is a moron," Kenzi explained, "I need help of both intellectual and physical variety and you seem to have both the muscle and the brain. Also, if we are to work together and I share what I have with you, I want you to ensure the fae won't kill Lauren. I want you to promise you will help her escape their wrath."

"Why should I promise to spare the sworn enemy of my people?" Dyson was astonished he was actually considering that possibility at all but he was.

"That's the part I was going to think through while Dima was supposed to be looking for you," the girl confided earnestly, "For now, just trust me to find a reason enough for you."

"I trust you," the wolf said and knew he meant it, "And I promise to give you the promise as soon as you're ready with the reason. On a different note, about your criminally-minded cousin Dima, how did Steve and the Morrigan know where to find you in a human bar and who you are?"

"You think he has betrayed me?" Kenzi easily connected the dots and the resigned acceptance of such a possibility in her tone tugged at the stitches in his side.

"That's a hell of a coincidence if he didn't," the wolf grumbled, his tone suggesting he didn't believe much in coincidences, "Anyways, worth a visit to your cousin – I can be real good interrogator."

"I am sure you are," Kenzi slanted a half-amused look, the memory of fangs flashing still not dimmed by time, "But no eating innocent humans if they are innocent."

"I''be fact-finding, not snacking," Dyson nodded, smiling into his beard, but the smile soon faded, "And the Morrigan is bad news. She must be thinking you're the good doctor's only Achilles heel and want to use you as such."

"I wouldn't flatter myself that much," the little human sighed without particular rancor, "I am more of a loveable nuisance. And I'm done being used."

"Then I'll have to sort out this problem for you, as a gesture of good will," the shifter concluded with an unhidden menace lurking in his blue gaze.

"And an unlikely alliance has been struck," the girl grinned extending her tiny hand, palm up, towards the fae, who took it cautiously, almost tenderly, into his.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The trick with the lights suddenly turned on to startle the wrong-doer into a guilty expression and a confession wouldn't work on a fae with a super nose and super ears so Tamsin didn't bother with springing it on Dyson. Perched on a stool with the hard edge of the kitchen table cutting into her back she simply did her best to look scolding with a tinge of intimidating and her best was, as usual, quite a good one.

"Where have you been and why didn't you pick up the phone when I called?" she interrogated – and there was no mistake it was an interrogation – as soon as Dyson strode into his loft, "when I have a task for my lieutenant, I want him to be immediately available".

"Picked a trail that might have been helpful but didn't pan out," the wolf muttered shrugging out of his jacket and throwing it over a chair next to his guest. The decision not to tell the valkyrie about his new human acquaintance was surprisingly easy to make but he kept the lie down to an oversized omission. On his way home he had had plenty of time to work through the scenario of putting Kenzi on Tamsin's radar and came to the inevitable conclusion – the human girl would immediately become bait and would be used as a lever and a bargaining chip in the fae wars and that was precisely what the wolf strongly disagreed with – disagreed to the point of withholding information and going behind his leaders' collective back. While Dyson implicitly trusted Tamsin and Trick to fight for the good of the fae he felt confident neither of them would think twice about sacrificing Kenzi and that, for no reason he could explain to himself, was something to be avoided at all costs.

"A trail?" Tamsin's tone indicated she wasn't letting him off the hook that easy and Dyson had to slip her a piece of truth to satisfy her commanding curiosity.

"I caught scent of the ex-Morrigan," he explained grudgingly, "But she threw an ogre bodyguard in my way and gave me the slip."

"Would be nice to get our hands on the old minx," the blonde mused aloud, "There's no getting the self-serving bitch to fight the common cause but she might have a useful tip or two."

"I'll keep sniffing around," the wolf promised quite truthfully, "And right now, if I might excuse myself – I am dead on my paws."

"Right now you don't actually need to stand up for what I have in mind for you," Tamsin drawled closing the distance between them and her left hand landed on his chest while her right one got busy with the buttons on his shirt, but the man's strong fingers arrested her movement.

"I am really exhausted – a fight with an ogre can do it to you," he growled, "and I'm generally not at my best as the one who dressed my wounds not so long ago should know."

The blonde's perfect little nose wrinkled in unmasked disappointment. "You are boring today, wolf," she complained but there was a note of understanding underneath the superficial tease. "Do you need me to look at your injuries again? The stitches might've popped," she added with a bit more warmth than she intended but the wolf shook his head.

"I just need some solid rest, Tams," he said simply with a smile of genuine gratitude and gently unhooked the valkyrie's hands off his shirt, "You can stay, as long as you are ok with sleeping and I mean just sleeping."

As he padded across the room to his bed and flopped onto it with little grace and without bothering with the rest of his clothing, Tamsin was overwhelmed with a sudden longing to take him up on his offer and spend the night curled at his side, listening to his even breathing, comforted by his warmth.

With an effort she turned away from the sight that was Dyson – sprawled on the covers with his shirt unbuttoned and halfway to asleep – and automatically picked up his negligently discarded jacket to fold it tidily. Seconds before she might have allowed herself to breathe out an OK to his hospitality, her eyes and her nose caught something that shouldn't be there, something offending and incongruous. Though her sense of smell was nowhere near as good as the wolf's she picked on a faint traces of human coming off the inside of his jacket while her blue-green eyes effortlessly latched onto a long black hair stuck to the inner lining.

"We don't have that kind of relationship, Dyson," she snapped throwing the jacket down and spinning on her heels, "If you aren't up to fucking me, what good are you to me?"

Startled by her sudden rudeness into a semi-awake state Dyson pried himself off the pillow and propped himself onto an elbow but it was too late for any chance of intercepting the valkyrie storming out of the door, even if the wolf was meaning to. Which he wasn't. When the heavy metal frame swung on its hinges behind the blonde, the wolf fell back onto the mattress with a grateful sigh. He had just foregone an opportunity of excellent fiery sex, irked his hair-trigger partner and oddly enough, felt much more relieved than chagrined.

Another person who had got plenty of action and none of it bedroom-related that night was the very little human currently at the forefront of the wolf's mind. Kenzi got to her quarters in what she hadn't yet got used to calling home in a pensive mood and with a warm feeling in her stomach that she totally credited to that shot of vodka she had downed at the bar.

Her first port of call was the lab that she hoped to find empty but the light was still dimly on and her sister's bent back was a bright white spot that beckoned to her as soon as she was over the threshold.

"Still working, Lori?" Kenzi called softly and the doctor swiveled to face her. The blonde's eyes – strained and bloodshot – met the pure grey and a wan smile found its way onto the thin lips. "I have some things to clear up," she murmured and glanced over at the clock that was pointing its luminescent hands at well past midnight.

"Things are more amenable to clearing up during daylight hours," the younger girl made her way over to an improvised tea counter and popped the electric kettle on, "Let me at least brew you some tea, sis, or you might start snoring while you talk."

"Have you just returned?" Lauren mustered enough energy to switch into her elder sister mode and to sound suitably stern.

"Hey, I have been using my very own chauffeur-less car to its fullest until you decide to change your mind and take it back," the girl replied lightly busying herself with the mugs and the tea-bags.

"I am not changing my mind if you promise not to do anything stupid and put yourself in danger," the doctor sighed and half-turned to save the document she had been working on, "I cannot guarantee your safety outside the compound if you refuse to have my guards follow you."

"Don't," Kenzi replied simply, "Don't guarantee, Lori, you cannot control everything."

"I am tired of not controlling what matters," Lauren rose from the chair and suddenly her frail figure acquired a regal, commanding quality, "If life has taught me something, it is to recognize the importance of being in control of your own destiny and of those you care for. Whenever I let myself be weak and consenting, it ended in a tragedy of various proportions. I am a great believer in control, Kenzi. So, where have you been?"

Kenzi eyed her older sister with a hint of irritation, but caution and the glimpse of something brewing in the deep brown of Lauren's huge eyes made her bite back a snark. Not the time to be cute, Kenz, she told herself and assumed a reasonably meek look.

"I went to visit Sasha," she answered obediently, fully aware that was a winning opening line, powerful enough to make Lauren feel slightly remorseful, "Then had a drink, then just sat on a bench trying to make my mind go blank. You know, for someone supposedly empty-brained that proved to be a tall order."

As the girl had predicted drawing on the previous experience and the knack of a younger sibling to handle an elder one, the blonde immediately seemed chastised and her bossiness subsided to tolerable levels.

"I am sorry, Kenzi," the blonde murmured with a distinctly guilty look, "It's my mistake as a doctor that you have to go there at all and it's my failing as a sister that you prefer to do it alone, without me."

The unease between the two women became almost tangible, it was hanging in the air like thick suffocating smoke and as much as Kenzi was enjoying inflicting this well-deserve discomfort on her sister, she knew she couldn't afford to pass up the splendid opportunity the night presented to her.

"And what are you doing here when a super luscious succubus is waning in your bedroom?" she switched subjects smoothly.

"I am working on some samples of the very same luscious succubus," Lauren gave a diluted smile in response, "Her behavior of late has been bothering me and, as usual, I am looking for answers in the biochemistry." 

"You might be doing better looking for answers in her anatomy, you know, hands-on approach," the brunette grinned mischievously and turned to the counter when she heard the pop of the kettle coming to the boil and switching itself off.

"Camomile?" she threw over her shoulder innocently as her nimble little fingers extracted a plastic tube from her pocket and fished out two pills. Still shielded from Lauren's view by her turned back, Kenzi slipped the tablets into the water even before she heard a _yes _and watched them fizzle and adissolve before taking the cups over to the doctor.

"Your samples are not going to go walkabout or vanish into thin air. Give it a break, Lori, you look like pale shit," she advised not without sincerity and put the cup in front of the blonde who took it up absent-mindedly.

"The problem is I can see no anomalies, nothing different from all the previous results," Lauren whispered, almost oblivious to the other girl's presence and took a sip of her tea.

"Anomalies?" Kenzi echoed and her lips curled into a half-derisive smirk, "For someone so scientifically minded and with such an ingrained need to analyze everything you seem pestered with anomalies you grapple to explain – like you lil' sis, for instance, and your lover."

Lauren took another nervous gulp and the cup clanked down back onto the saucer. "I have to know everything about her, Kenz," she jabbered feverishly, "You can't control what you lack knowledge of."

"Oh, so you're fine-tuning your warhead-carrying missile," the younger girl scoffed, "Bo-to-surface, destructive when touched, deathly when kissed."

"That's not funny," the blonde glared at her sister deprecatingly, "Bo is pretty much all that is standing between you, me and being summarily executed by the fae."

"Who might just have a justifiable grudge against you," the girl huffed, "which is automatically spilled onto me by association."

"Sooner or later they would've killed me anyway, Kenz, I knew too much of their world," Lauren confided letting her gaze drop and stifling an oncoming yawn, "They would have wrung me dry and thrown me away to die like a jellyfish in the sun."

Her huge brown eyes were getting drowsy and her shoulders hunched as the sleep was claiming her exhausted body and Lauren put her arms on the desk in front of her for support.

"And you, my dear, are far from an innocent victim dragged into this mess because of your elder sister's erroneous ways," she went on, her words slightly slurred as she leaned forward, "you paid for your own lack of rational thinking and negligence of birth control. You knew Hale was out of your league even before you found out about the fae, you should have known nothing good ever comes out of a sweeping romance with a rich kid laden with old money and old prejudice. And you should've run when you found out who he really was, who they all are."

Lauren barely scraped up the energy to finish her tirade as her head fell forward and onto the cushion of her arms and her lids slipped shut.

"I just fell in love," Kenzi whispered coming over to the doctor and sticking a flash-drive into the blinking computer.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

After the flash drive was safely tucked away in her hidey-hole, already crammed with similarly recorded data, Kenzi tiptoed into the bedroom to cast a cautious look at the sleeping form of the man she used to love. For a second, she listened to his even breathing and then silently withdrew into the main room, reassured she hadn't exceeded the dose. The recent events were dancing merrily in her mind, her sister – so powerful and yet so vulnerable, the wolf she had considered a manipulable ally who had given her his jacket because she was cold.

Cold? She used to like the austere Canadian temperatures, braved them with extra short skirts and fish-nets, these days, however, she so often felt cold, even at the height of summer. So, she ran scorching-hot baths, wrapped herself in extra layers of wool, cranked up the heating, most often, she tried to banish the cold in her docile lover's arms – and failed more often than not. But that particular night she hadn't even been able to bring herself to try so she drugged him instead of giving explanations or simulating a migraine.

Kenzi headed for the shower but, as if punishing herself, took the coolest shower her unpadded body could take and emerged from the en-suite bathroom wrapped in a big towel to the sight of Hale sitting in the arm-chair, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his face propped against his locked hands.

"My mistr…, Kenzi," he leaped up to his feet gracefully, his despondent expression changing to a radiant smile, "I am devastated – I fell asleep while you were out to see the Queen."

"I didn't tell you to wait up for me, did I?" the girl shrugged her shoulders dismissively, "No biggie."

"I thought you might need me when you came back but I just couldn't fight the drowsiness," the fae admitted dejectedly, dropping his gaze to the carpet.

"This chamomile tea is such a calming effect," Kenzi allowed a mischievous smile onto her composed face, "It's really ok, Hale, I was tired and wasn't after any entertainment, I would've woken you up if I had been desperate."

"If you are now, we could …," the young siren let the conditional hang suggestively, knowing from past experience how often Kenzi sought oblivion and comfort in his warm embrace and eager to redeem himself.

The girl, however, only wrapped the towel tighter around her damp body. "No, I am not," she replied firmly, "I'll tell you when I need you."

Her tone mellowed as she saw the sincere misery on the dark face and the words slipped out, almost beyond her volition, "I went to see our child yesterday, Hale. Well, I obviously mean the grave. I pretended to speak to him or maybe to her. I just call him my little Sasha."

"Would you like me to go with you?" the siren asked with concern and took her hand into his.

"Are you offering because you're programmed to serve me and please me or because you are grieving for our baby too?" Kenzi looked up into his face and cursed her own remnants of naivety as Hale's face contorted with the pangs of residual self-awareness fighting the losing battle with the overpowering thrall.

"I must make you happy any way I can," he finally replied through clenched teeth, "And I feel bad where you feel bad."

Kenzi slowly released a breath she was holding and shook her head, her eyes cold again, "You won't make me happy by tagging along to the cemetery but if one day, by a miracle, you get your willpower back and want to go there, please, do."

Lauren woke up, stiff and disoriented, when the sun was already seeping through the venetians into the lab. She stretched her aching body into a more comfortable position, her joints creaking in protest and her head ringing.

"What the …?" she muttered under her breath, looked around drowsily and passed the tip of her tongue over her dry lips, "I haven't been doing solitary drinking, have I?"

Her memory obligingly pushed her late-night talk with her sister to the forefront of her addled mind and Lauren frowned. "It's not the first time over the last couple of months that I have zonked out like that," she chided herself, "I'm overworking and over-worrying. Kenzi is right – I can't control everything and should probably get more bedroom action."

Her fingers floated over the keyboard, waking up the computer and closing the windows she had left open. Quickly bouncing back to her usual collected and tidy self, the doctor turned to deal with the leftovers of her little tea party she clearly remembered as her last conscious action and a puzzled expression crossed her features. The tea things had been neatly cleaned away, the cup washed and put back in its place on the counter. Before she could fully process this totally un-Kenzi gesture, the door swung open and a boisterous succubus made her way in and in a heartbeat curled her arms around the slim figure in her stubbornly immaculate lab coat.

"Spent the night working again, my love," Bo whispered in her ear, ticking the tender skin with her hot breath and fully aware of the effect produced, "I decided to let you be, but I'm not going to keep cutting you so much slack. You don't want your chief of security to run on half-tank – tonight will be all mine."

"My experiments," the blonde waved a hand towards her equipment and her PC.

"And tonight we'll be doing mine," the succubus smile was 100% pure seduction, "No solitary confinement for you, baby."

"It wasn't solitary," Lauren corrected, unable not to reciprocate the smile, "Kenzi was keeping me her usual begrudging company, huffing and scoffing, but basically, I think she came to thank me for the car. Though she'd never have said that out loud – she made me tea instead."

"Did she spit in it?" Bo chortled good-humoredly, "Just to prove she can and that she's still the rebellious one."

"Hey, she even washed my cup," the blonde grinned, "The first labor of Kenzi."

"Kenzi washing up?" Bo was earnestly surprised and went over to the counter as if to check with her eyes what her ears had difficulty accepting, "She barely bothers to pitch her dirty clothes into the laundry basket around here. And when she does, it's usually the wrong basket and I get my whites stained from her red panties."

"Maybe she's growing out of her attitude after all," the doctor commented, busy with returning her desk to its pristine condition while the succubus inspected the counter and squatted down to surreptitiously peek into the bin. Her nimble finger quickly ran through the little waste it contained and a heavily doubtful expression settled onto her fine features. "And she seems to have taken the used tea-bag as well," the brunette muttered, her voice pitched low enough not to carry as far as the doctor's ears.

Dyson woke up fuelled with a sense of purpose and completely unruffled by the altercation he had had with Tamsin the night before and well past feeling any compunction about withholding the Kenzi-related information from the valkyrie.

"I promised to take care of her, not to be at the ready whenever she's got the itch in sensitive parts," he reasoned with his reflection in the mirror as he contemplated taking a razor to the stubble covering the lower part of his face – the thought that hadn't occurred to him in centuries. His gaze swept over his Spartan array of bathroom things and he had to put the shaving on indefinite hold as it blatantly required an implement he obviously didn't possess.

"First things first," the wolf told himself and set about getting himself in decent shape for the task he had set himself. After a quick shower and a meteoric breakfast he felt as good as new, his still stinging wounds aside, and stepped out of his loft with a good idea of how to find the Russian who hadn't exactly endeared himself to the wolf through being heavily suspected of playing both sides. Using his ex-cop list of unsavory contacts, when coupled with the wolf's persuasion techniques and quick punches where his wits were not quick enough, was the most expedient way to reach the goal both in the fae and in the human world.

If Dima had only known he happened to be a werewolf's goal that day, he might have enrolled into witness protection. If he had had any inkling of what depth of shit his restless Slavic spirit was getting him into, he would have steered clear of deserted alleyways, but foresight was not one of his numerous survival skills. In fact, his day started highly promising as he exited the back door of a strip joint he had just got his cut from, money in his pocket, a smile on his face and sauntered down the alley the biggest current worry on his mind being where to spend the hard-earned cash at such an early off-peak hour. Despite being inordinately proud of his cop-detecting nose, he got not a foreboding until it hit him right in the face, or to be precise, until a hefty fist hit him right in the face.

More astonished than hurt the Russian went down, scraping his ass on the hard gravel of the sidewalk, and looked up at a tall man who didn't even try to look intimidating as he simply was just that. After lightning-quick assessment of the opponent's blue eyes, fair hair and athletic figure, Dima immediately reached two simple conclusions – that fighting back was out of the question and that his assailant had most likely nothing to do with his Chinese or Italian competitors.

"Don't tell me the Irish are back," he mumbled to himself and felt obliged to fumble for his switch blade but was immediately dissuaded by a foot pinning his restless hand down.

"Hey, that's my turf," the Russian tried for rightfully outraged but quickly changed tack, "But I can share if you are short of cash."

"I am not with the mob and you skanky life style is none of my concern," Dyson growled with distaste looking down at the lowlife, "You were to find some information for a girl called Kenzi, your cousin."

Dima recognized the statement for what it clearly wasn't – a question and didn't waste his breath denying any of the above.

"Instead of getting her the intel, you seem to be giving the intel on her to the others, though," the wolf laid out his suspicions and didn't see a shadow of guilt in the transparent blue of the other man's eyes. And again, Dima refrained from denying not certain of what the stranger was after or whose side he was on.

"Did you tell anyone about your meeting with her last night?" the wolf squatted next to the Russian without stepping off his wrists that cracked ominously under his shifting weight. Dima cried out in pain and threw out through gritted teeth, "Kenzi sent you? She's gone against her people now?"

"If your answer to my question is yes, then it's her people who have gone against her," Dyson stated flatly, "Was it a woman with curly dark hair, fancy dresses and an abundance of arrogance?"

An extra second of hesitation cost Dima a broken wrist, which finally convinced him the stranger was the immediate and very real danger against all the other, more remote threats.

"Yes, she approached me about a week ago, told me to call her Milady and said she was willing to shell out for any info on Kenzi or Lori, her elder sister," the Russian whined, cradling his finally released but fractured arm to his chest.

"And you agreed to sell out your cousin, just like that, for a handful of cash?" the shifter inquired casually, reigning in an impulse to snack on the conscience-free opportunistic scum.

"Not just like that and that was much more than a handful she offered," the Russian muttered defensively, "And what's the harm in that? I just told her some bits and pieces about Kenzi, nothing she couldn't have gotten off her police record."

"Plus a little something on where to find the girl," Dyson added, "Didn't it occur to you that you were setting your cousin up for something really nasty?"

"Hey, dude, I don't know what Kenzi has gotten herself into but she's become the focus of interest for some really scary peeps," Dima bumbled on, "Like the muscle mountain that was with that woman, you don't say no to that kind of heavy, he looked like he lives in the gym and has no social conscience."

"Does he have claws as well?" Dyson was losing patience fast as he grabbed the other man by the fold of his shirt and pressed his own extended talons to front of his shirt, "Cos if he doesn't, then you haven't met scary yet."

Dima felt pricks of something frighteningly sharp against his chest and knew it was a now-or-never moment.

"I haven't told them everything," he cried, desperately whipping out his trump card, "Neither Kenzi nor this woman, I haven't told them about this doctor Taft … I've found him … more or less. I was going to sell it to Milady."

"You've got yourself a stay of execution but not yet a pardon," the wolf told him quite honestly and let his claws retract, "I need all the information you've found on the good doctor and then you're going to call this milady and arrange for a meeting."

"She'll get my hide for that," Dima squeaked as the cell was unceremoniously extracted from his pocket and shoved into his good hand.

"No, she won't, and anyway, I already have your hide," the shifter said almost good-naturedly, flashing a toothy grin at the Russian.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Tamsin pulled no punches as she attacked the bag, reducing it to a ripped heap of sand in minutes. "I am just angry and frustrated," she told herself, tugging the hand-wraps off and wiping the sweat off her brow, "Dumb wolf!" 

"Really?" a voice inquired from the entrance and the Valkyrie, startled but not spooked, turned to greet the older man with a slight respectful bow of her head.

"I've been watching the show from the sidelines and couldn't help noticing you're not exactly in the best of moods," the Blood King waddled over and nodded towards the sandy molehill under the still swaying remnants of the punching bag, "It's not exercising, it's punishing. What has Dyson done?"

"It's rather what he hasn't done," the woman huffed, "and I'm not going to expand as far as it doesn't concern our cause."

"Doesn't it?" Trick smirked mirthlessly, "Whatever is happening between my two major fighters is bound to have a bearing on the cause. I wasn't overly worried when you were getting into each other pants – everyone needs to relax. But now you seem to be getting too deep into each other's hearts as well."

"He's not going anywhere north of my waistline," the blonde snarled, resisting a childish urge to kick something solid and, preferably, resisting.

The man didn't make much of an effort to pretend he believed her as a sigh rippled through his broad chest. "In an ideal fae world I would say it's none of my concern what two fae centuries over age of consent are dong in their spare time together. A couple of years ago I would remind you that you were Dark where he was Light. But under these presently absolutely abnormal circumstances, I have to remind you how much your heart can mess with your priorities."

"It won't," Tamsin promised projecting all the conviction she didn't really feel. 

"Good," Trick nodded, seemingly satisfied for the time being, "Then, you'll think over my suggestion with a clear head and an open mind. I was mulling over the fae we need to try out the antidote on and came up with Dyson."

Tamsin, who bent over to pick a bottle of water, felt her fingers loosen around the cool plastic. "Dyson?" she yelped letting the bottle slide down and plonk down on the floor, "But you said it yourself, the antidote is far from a safe bet and the wolf is too valuable to risk losing to the doctor's dubious charms."

The shrewd brown eyes locked with the panicking green as the Blood King reached his conclusions, "All of the above is so true that I wouldn't normally think of it, Tamsin. Dyson is valuable and the risk is high but _you_ are even more valuable and the risk of having you distracted, with your priorities skewed is much more of a hazard. I have been harboring suspicions for a long while and now you have failed your test, my Valkyrie. You can keep telling yourself you don't have feelings for him and that, anyway, it has nothing to do with our fight, but you'll be lying to yourself. Either you shake it off and pull yourself together or my decoy suggestion to sacrifice Dyson for the greater good might take on the proportions of a necessity."

When Trick's dignified back was safely out of sight and well out of the door, Tamsin methodically ripped the plastic piece by small piece, oblivious of the water and blood dripping down her fingers in a pinkish mix. "I'm not letting men, any men, rule my life," she hissed, her torn fingers starting to sting, and though the words sounded so good and confidence-restoring, in her tortured heart of hearts she knew she was well beyond the point of not caring.

The ambush, in all its simplicity, worked precisely because it was simple and was based on a sound assumption that Evony would be too arrogant to be suspicious of a cowering human. She made a royal entrance, black lace, figure-hugging dress, immaculate make-up, into the abandoned storage unit, flanked by two fae guards of Steve proportions, her only concession to the hard times heels an inch lower on her dainty feet.

"Hopefully, this tip of yours will prove more reliable, the last one didn't exactly pan out," she barked to the Russian, not bothering with a greeting, "What have you unearthed for me, you little human rat?"

"I've got the revised last known location for Isaac Taft," Dima hurried to showcase his usefulness.

"That's already something," the brunette extended a peremptory hand and grabbed the piece of paper the man rushed forward to place in her open palm, "But a shady scientist vaguely connected to my person of interest wouldn't warrant my muddling through the dirt to this god-forsaken hellhole of a meeting place. I would've met you at a restaurant but for the fear of being seen with someone like you."

She nodded to one of the lackeys, who stepped forward to shove a wad of cash into Dima's still questioningly outstretched hand, and went on with the same air of disgusted superiority, "One more task and you'll get twice as much – I need the girl and I need you to get her to me."

"You need Kenzi?" the Russian dared to raise his voice interrogatively, "What are you going to do with her? She's just a small-time street hustler, nothing much. And she's my cousin…"

"Don't pretend you're currently growing a conscience," Evony scoffed back, "Anyway, you're paid enough for it to be none of your concern. But just saying, she's too valuable to allow for any bodily harm. Though that stipulation might not extend to mental damage." 

Dima looked marginally relieved as he hastily pocketed the money and took a careful step towards the exit, nodding his full cooperation and unquestioning obedience.

"You're going to call her and lure her with some information to the spot of my choosing," the woman instructed with total confidence he had no option but to do her bidding.

"This old barn might actually do," Evony looked lazily around the darkened room with stacks of old crates cluttering the dimmest off-center parts, "So, here, sooner rather than later and alone, with no wolf escort."

Dima's blank look of not understanding would have probably amused the Dark fae to the point of giving some tongue-in-cheek elucidation if she wasn't interrupted in her inspired speech to the troops by the sound of a soft thump and a deep voice cutting into her plan-laying.

"That last part can prove problematic, Fleurette," Dyson hadn't even hoped for such a dramatic cue to make his entrance while he had been hiding atop the crates, shrouded in darkness and listening closely to the proceedings.

He didn't catch his breath or let the others draw theirs as he efficiently snapped the neck of one of the lackeys and turned, lighting-quick, to slash at the throat of the second guard with a long arm, fully equipped with the wolf claws. His unoccupied hand curled into a fist and punched the light out of Dima, who was rapidly shifting from thoroughly not understanding to uncannily spooked.

"See, now we can talk, darling," the wolf sneered, fully alert and far from underestimating the fragile woman in front of him.

"Who sent you? The Blood King?" the ex-Morrigan didn't lose an ounce of her aplomb, "The old loser wants to negotiate? Can't take out the human genius on his own?"

"Are you sure you can be of any help?" Dyson asked, his expression inscrutable, neither confirming nor denying anything, "He might well have sent me to take your self-serving bitchiness out of the game once and for all."

"I am sure he'll value my company and my contribution more than the pleasure of contemplating my grave. He's been making noises on that account, trying to find me and get me to unite fronts. Besides, I am the only one who has come up with a hostage idea and who has actually found a viable hostage," the woman drawled condescendingly, still dismissive of any threat from the fae she firmly placed in the subordinate category.

"Are you talking about the human girl I saved from your empty-brained goon?" the wolf squinted, no derision in return and not much of an outside display of emotion either. On the inside, his mind was going a mile a minute flashing through the possible outcomes – for Kenzi, for the Blood King, for Tamsin, for their common fight for liberation, for himself – and going all the way back to the small human again.

"Have you already figured out why I want her? Or is that too much of rocket science for an uncouth old Celt?" Evony pretended to be primarily occupied with the play of diamonds on her ring finger, "Frankly, Dyson, you'll greatly benefit from being turned into a mindless thrall – beautiful, obedient and preferably shirtless is the best you can do."

The shifter let the snark slide, indulging the woman's slamming tendencies and moving an imperceptible inch closer to her instead.

"The Blood King is not winning this battle, he needs me as an ally, and I might bring something to the table. That is, if I am interested enough," the brunette continued, growing more certain of her upper hand, "Or I might keep the dessert to myself and negotiate a nice little arrangement with the other side – with the good doctor herself."

Whichever option seemed at the moment more appealing to the woman herself, neither was admissible for the wolf. The ex-Morrigan sides with the fae resistance – she sells them Kenzi and makes a bargaining chip out of the girl. Evony being Evony, she plays the trump card with the human ruler – no telling if Kenzi will survive the negotiations between the two ruthless bitches. There might have been more mutually satisfactory options lurking in the area of the less obvious scheming but the wolf decided to go with Evony's version of his mental capacities and not to delve too deep.

Taken with the great prospects she herself had just outlined and lulled into the feeling of safety, the dark fae was a second too late to see the threat stepping up to get close up and personal. Just a fraction of a second past the moment she could've done something to melt the offender into a puddle of flesh Fleurette looked up into the yellowing blue and choked on a surge of fear. "You can't kill me, your master needs me," she wheezed, her deathly fingers making a dash to connect and destroy the impudent wolf but the man with the animal reflexes was faster.

"You said I don't have a master any longer," Dyson enunciated into her contorted face as his claws sank deep into her heart, "For some fae Lauren Lewis brought slavery, for some – liberation from the old constrictive ways."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Trick straightened up from a blood-colored concoction in a small bowl and pushed aside an intimidatingly thick tome smiling triumphantly. "We've done it, Stella," he announced and a gorgeous supple long-legged figure of a woman rose herself from a low couch where she had been stretched with a magazine that looked suspiciously like a glossy.

"The antidote is ready?" she asked, her voice indistinguishably accented, as she approached and peered at the liquid he was pouring into a vial with the look of a cardio-surgeon concentration.

"The very same, our break-thought, our hope," the Blood King grinned like a boy shedding thousands of years of living experience in a moment of victorious mirth.

"We'll fall the tyrant and the fae will be back to their old life," Stella mirrored his joy, her full lips stealing a breath off Trick.

"And I'll have my grand-daughter back," he confirmed, placing the vial carefully into an already waiting felt-lined box, "Even if she doesn't forgive me."

"You were only trying to protect her," the woman soothed passing a soft hand across his slightly sweaty forehead.

"Generation gap," Trick gave a crooked smile, "And she thinks, at least she thought when she still possessed the ability to think without being compelled to, that I'm an overbearing, overprotective bastard who separated her from everyone she loved – her mother, her lover."

"A patented psycho willing to sacrifice her own child to her own murky ends and a supercilious wolf cazanova who broke her heart for a fairy who he, in his turn, stole from his best friend." 

"Posthumously stole, to be fair to Dyson – Ciara was his best friend's widow," the Blood King murmured, closing the box and sealing it with a spell, "and the wolf just didn't realize a succubus can be capable of true love, he thought Bo was only using him for sex and followed my orders in keeping her sated and stable. And then he turned round to disobey my orders and reveal the truth that Bo was absolutely not ready to accept."

"And willingly or inadvertently, he was instrumental in separating you from your grand-daughter and alienating her from the Light," Stella was not in a forgiving mood.

"And now he'll redeem himself by being instrumental in bringing Bo back to me," Trick sighed and putting the box down took the woman's hands in his, "He'll infiltrate Lauren Lewis's ranks and pave the way for Tamsin to deliver the final, crushing blow."

"That does come off a bit vindictive, my king," Stella smiled languorously, And a bit hard on the poor puppy."

"He failed me as a solider, he failed me as a friend," Trick shrugged his shoulders, "I would've have ordered him dead but he saved my life more than once before and I am giving him a chance now. A fighting chance to serve his king and to save the woman he wronged, actually two women he mistreated, though Tamsin would never admit it out loud."

"That is if Tamsin lets you risk him, she knows full well the antidote might not work and she might not appreciate your ulterior motive. You're making the same mistake with her as you made with Bo – hiding too much from a strong, independently-minded woman," Stella chided, her tone cold where her gaze was warm. 

"She is a loyal warrior, well-versed in the ways of our world. She has to understand a commander who assumes responsibility has to dole out the knowledge the way he sees fit – that has always been the way," the man frowned, a sifting expression in his eyes as if his words aimed more to persuade himself than his lover.

"A loyal warrior or not, she is a woman in love. I personally would rip to shreds anyone asking me to put your beautiful mind on the line for any noble cause or educational purposes," the woman raised his hands to her lips.

"Then we'll need to give her an incentive," the Blood King breathed out as her hot mouth grazed his knuckles, "A reason to think that Dyson has made enough bad calls to be risked."

They met at a human café, cozy, light and airy thanks to huge shop-windows, complete with a pink-wearing waitress and an avuncular-looking man behind the counter, the bun-stand oozing seductive smells and an overall atmosphere of normalcy. But there was nothing normal, not in any human terms, about the pretty young brunette with empty eyes and a scruffy tall man with ginger-tinted stubble, who was older than the country he currently resided in.

"I found a lead on doctor Taft," he leaned across the table as if apprehensive of being overheard by the elderly couple sitting in the next booth.

"Good, and I've got the samples smuggled out of the mansion and put into a safe deposit box," the girl didn't move to lean towards him but didn't flinch from him either, "And where's the intel coming from?"

"I've got my sources," Dyson replied noncommittally, torn half-way between a childish desire to brag and a more mature suspicion Kenzi might not like to hear the truth and appreciate the way he had treated her backstabbing but obviously not numerous family members.

Coincidentally or acting on an informed hunch the girl steered the conversation right to it: "My source –my cousin Dima – is currently out of the running. In the polite society I would've called it 'taken ill', in the present company, I will have to cite a couple of broken ribs and a good deal of intimidation that landed him in hospital and giving me the usual _i-fell-off-the-stairs_ denial routine." Kenzi tore her gaze off her untouched plate and scrutinized the bearded face in front of her with pronounced suspicion based on having witnessed firsthand the wolf's ways.

"I've done more interrogations on both sides of the table than you've had proper dinners, going by your size zero look," the wolf chortled to himself, keeping his expression delightfully innocent. "Dangerous line of business, your family is in," he said out loud instead and added with false sympathy, "Tried punching above his weight? Literally?"

"I'll ask as soon as his jaw is knitted back together," the girl shot back, "So, on to the good doctor. Does your source say if he is anywhere around or are you trying to impress me?"

"Both. A couple of hours drive from here," Dyson replied with what was only true on both counts, "Are you up for a little field trip?"

"I'll have to clear my calendar first," the girl scoffed, "That and a tiny problem of a powerful old fae gunning after my little human Lauren-related self."

"Don't worry your pretty head," the wolf allowed some extra teeth to show in his grin, "She won't bother you any longer."

"Still trying to impress me?" Kenzi asked, genuinely surprised despite herself and distinctly reluctant to go into any _whys_.

"Succeeding?" Dyson's grin turned into a mild smile and he caught himself thinking the last time he had put so much consideration and conscious effort into speaking to a girl was well before the advent of a gramophone. What followed threw him into a deeper thrilled astonishment.

Later on, Kenzi spent a long time in the bathtub convincing herself she had only done that to remember what an un-enthralled man felt like. She even delivered a full-scale lecture on the topic of why handsome men are bad for you, wandering into 5 reasons to steer clear of bearded dudes. All the while, deep down in her bubble-covered body and in her confused soul, under the rationalizations and the self-admonitions she knew she had enjoyed every micro-second and every tiny breath when her lips were connected to the wolf's.

Dyson's response was much simpler and unequivocal as the girl lunged forward and pressed her hot little mouth to his, with the desperation and passion he had suspected but couldn't hope for under her enigmatically tragic exterior. He regretted not going through with his impetuous idea of shaving, strived to remember if he had brushed his teeth that morning and, above all, savored the feel and the smell and the taste that engulfed his whole being.

When she finally drew apart, seemingly unflustered but out of breath he didn't know whether to comment or to keep his mouth shut and opted for a safer option. Kenzi, on the other hand, dug into the cooled food on her plate with a sudden surge of appetite and informed him, in between the bites, "Don't get your hopes up or anything else for that matter, wolfie. I am whimsical and desperately trying to maintain the image."

The elderly couple in the next booth watched the kiss with an entertained disapproval while across the road from the cafe, Tamsin clenched her fists in her lap as her sharp eyes observed the little scene through the shop window.

"Really! A human, young enough to be your great-great-great and another ten times great-grand-daughter?" she gritted out and almost bit down on the tip of her tongue when the unbidden trite clichés threatened to fall out of her mouth. _How could you?_ and _How could I be so stupid?_ chased by self-recriminations, closely followed by burgeoning impotent rage.

Humiliation and hurt were brewing together, nearing the combustion point and the Valkyrie was one tiny step from barging into the café and causing a scene and a fight the wolf would need a couple of weeks to recover from when her cell chirped inside her pocket and Tamsin clamped her hand around the miniature device and stamped down on her temper.

"It's better be urgent," she barked into the receiver, too far gone to care that she was talking to the Blood King.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

"Catching you at a bad time?" the old fae inquired diplomatically.

"Just following a tip-off from one of our informants," Tamsin could muster enough self-control to slightly mollify her tone, her rage-burning eyes still trained at the cozy scene across the road with Dyson and the girl hot and bothered after the lip-lock.

"So was I," Trick went on unperturbed, "And my informant says we've lost Evony."

"Don't tell me Lauren Lewis got to her first," the blonde frowned as her concern over the implications of the human muzzling one of the most powerful fae in the region overwhelmed her broken heart momentarily.

"No, it's not that bad, but Evony's dead. Someone sliced through her heart," the Blood King reported evenly, "Someone fast and strong enough to get close to her after dispatching her two guards. Someone with sharp narrow blades for weapon, if the coroner's report is anything to go on."

Tamsin choked on the words that were about to come tumbling out of her mouth, her eyes squinting as she coldly observed the couple at the table across the road – no longer kissing, but seemingly nonchalantly happy in each other's company – the girl carelessly tucking into her fries, the man watching her with a sincere smile on his recently kissed lips.

"He never looks so happy with me," the thought gave the Valkyrie a jolt and she had to pinch herself to drag her focus back to the phone conversation.

"Are you still there, Tamsin?" a little irritation peeked through the customary civility of Trick's tone, "I was telling you about the report and about the MO. You know, if I wasn't that confident that Dyson would never go against my express orders, I might even think it sounds just like him."

He waited a minute for any objections to follow but the line was silent.

"Besides, I am pretty sure he spent the last night with you," the ancient fae piled on, "So, actually, we have nothing, a passing fae with a grudge, a spurned lover, a century-old enemy – you name it. Evony was quite an old hand at arousing murderous intentions."

"He wasn't with me, I have no idea where he was last night. No alibi for hi and the MO is suspiciously close but I can see no reason for him to kill Evony, other than self-defense. But then he would report to us about this," Tamsin replied slowly, feeling the weight of her as yet untaken decision settling down on her shoulders, "You said you had an informant?"

"More of a witness actually, one of the late Morrigan's guards, Steve," Trick confirmed eagerly, "He's now in one of my cages, and you're most welcome to interrogate him to your heart's content. With the rate at which you're going through punching bags these days, this might even be cheaper."

An hour later Tamsin clattered downstairs and a key-turn later jerked the door of the cage open. The huge fae inside rose from his sitting position to his full height and looked down at the slender woman with a slight surprise plastered over his vapid features.

"First a wolf with his claws, then a blood sage with his scorching powder, now a bottle-blonde bimbo," Steve muttered to himself and was rewarded with a punch to his gut that left him winded and clutching his bruised ribs.

"First off, I am not bottle-blonde, moron," Tamsin sneered, surreptitiously shaking her over-exercised knuckles, "Born back in the day when Scandinavia was the land of natural blondes. Second off, what were you mumbling about the wolf?"

"I thought you were interested in the Morrigan," the giant wheezed unbending enough to look up at the woman and quickly revising his opinion of her under the steel gaze of her arctic green eyes.

"She's dead, I am not interested," the Valkyrie replied dismissively, "Give me the wolf and I might spare you the rest of your bones. Did he come to ask you about Evony? Was he also looking for her?"

"No," Steve answered honestly but, sadly, the truth only brought him a couple of more symmetrically splintered ribs. When he finally could uncurl and breathe again, he felt obliged to elucidate, "He wasn't looking for my … late mistress, but they met – they argued over a girl."

"Which girl?" the Valkyrie skillfully expressed annoyance, impatience and an itch to dish out a bit more with a simple rise to her brow and that spurred Steve on in his story.

"I don't know, a human girl, Evony wanted me to get her and the wolf interfered, they squared off and my mistress decided not to dirty her hands with the wolf bowels over a human and left him to it," he rattled off.

"What did she look like? The girl?" Tamsin growled the question out, her mind already churning.

"Small, tiny, skin and bone, huge eyes, dark hair, nothing much to rest your eye on," Steve sighed, "A female of my kind should be able to carry her future husband over the threshold of their house and straight to his bed before he deems her worthy to be mother of his sons."

"That's why your kind is so damned huge and so damned stupid," the Valkyrie spluttered, suddenly in need of a confidante, "So, you're telling me my lover protected a human girl before the all-powerful Dark fae at the peril of his life? You're telling me the Morrigan was interested enough in a no-name human to carve some time off her spa procedures to squabble with the wolf over her? The only reason that comes to mind is he loves her and that's precisely why Evony wanted her – to use her as leverage against Dyson. And now, in order to protect his mortal fragile love, he has gone so far as to kill the Morrigan against his own king's wishes?"

"My brother Bruce, who was the poetic type, would say that true love is more powerful than any laws or loyalties," Steve nodded eagerly, not quite following the train of thought beyond the obvious romantic plot-line.

"And I, the not poetic type, say nonsense," Tamsins snarled, her beautiful face suddenly darkening, sharp outlines of bone delineated through the pale skin. Her green eyes blacked over, her voice deepened, her featured were submerged by the skull-like shadows as she approached the enormous fae who belatedly registered the menace and started backing away until he was pressed against the bars of the cage.

"You are moron, you were born a moron, who could never distinguish truth form erratic figments of his own lame imagination," the husky genderless tone told him, "You don't know who attacked you, you don't know if there was a girl there or not, if she was human or fae, dead or alive. You displeased your mistress and now she's dead. Do you know who killed her? You don't! Cos you don't know anything, you don't even know if that wasn't you who stabbed the Dark Morrigan to death!"

"I loved my mistress," Steve shrieked, clutching at the pieces of his sanity with the last of his mind and feeling this much under-exercised tool of his failing him.

"You don't know that," Tamsin spat out contemptuously and saw with satisfaction the man slump down, wailing and clutching at his head.

"I wish I could get all I've just heard scrambled out of my own mind," the blonde told herself as she was heaving her suddenly exhausted body up the stairs, as if weighed down by the knowledge.

"I've lived through centuries of betraying cheating assholes, I'll survive this one," she gritted through her teeth before opening the door and slipping on the cool and collected mask of one awesome valkyrie.

Kenzi didn't dare pack the smallest bag, even an overnight bag was smacking of an escape attempt that any and every of the enthralled fae crawling the space of the mansion would instantly report to her sister.

The girl had to do with wrapping herself into an extra sweater, one for the road, and stuffing some cash from her emergency fund into her jacket. She reasoned that a toothbrush and any toiletries she might need could much easier be bought on the way than sneaked out of a heavily guarded house. Sneaking herself out was no mean feat either and she knew she would have to tax her imagination to come up with a legitimately-sounding pretext to get from under her sister's watchful eye for any considerable length of time.

Before she had the chance of coming up with anything half-way decent, however, Lauren herself, as if guided by a six sense, stepped into her en-suite after a peremptory knock on the door.

"I knew you have all the comings and goings monitored," the younger girl grumbled by way of a greeting, struggling to collect her scattered wits.

"Cameras, Bo's in charge of our CCTV," the doctor shrugged her shoulders as if surprised by the need to explain, "There are too many powerful creatures out to hurt us –we can't afford to be negligent. And I am not going to waste my breath asking where you've been seeing as you're back home safe and sound."

Kenzi bit down on half a dozen choice retorts she had for that particular argument as well as for the use of the word _home_ and prepared to make her own case but her sister beat her to it.

"I thought about what you told me that night at the lab," she started cautiously, "And I know that you're right, that I should allow myself to be a bit happier, less trouble-ridden, I should spend more time with my woman, my gorgeous woman. But your words, they go both ways, I mean so should you, Kenz. After all, the man you love is right here, at your side."

"Yep, enslaved and enthralled, to be precise," the younger girl commented, almost inured to the thought.

"In the old world, you two would never have stood a chance, they would've prised you apart," Lauren crossed her arms on her chest defensively, "Actually, they did just that – they took your baby, they took your man because you were human, because you were beneath them. I gave him back to you. If I could, I would give Sasha back too but …"

"But not even you are powerful enough," Kenzi couldn't keep the bitterness out of her tone but she clamped hard on a swarm of emotions that Lauren's words evoked.

"And Hale is no longer the man I loved," she added as calmly as she could fishing for a window of opportunity, "And making love in the closely monitored conditions you've created is seriously not romantic. The backseat of my car would give more thrills."

"It's for your own protection," the doctor shook her head sternly, back to her older sister mode, "You are already taking too many liberties, sneaking outside without guard. If anyone finds out who you're, you'll have a target on your back …"

"Prancing around with a squad of fae bodyguards will make me a marked human girl much faster, Lolo," Kenzi singsonged, "When it's just my little inconspicuous me, a bag of meat of no importance, I am beneath any fae notice. Bottom line, you've caged me here, with a man I no longer have any real feelings for. I can't get out, I can't meet someone else. Not fair, Lolo. Let Kenzi out, just for a day or two. A romantic weekend at the Niagara Falls? No fae, no thralls, just me, the awe-striking wonder of nature, plenty of ice-cream and no-one around to drone on about my sickly throat. That's a Kenzi-dream these days. Pathetic, really. Pretty please?"

Lauren smiled at the glimpse of the old Kenzi – skittish, playful, charming, but had to brace herself to shake her head, "No, honey, it's too dangerous, not unless you take security with you."

"Spoilsport. You are. A major one," Kenzi rapped out the words, her cajoling quickly turning into a royal sulk, "Yeah, keep protecting me until I die of boredom and old age. You know your supposed enemies might be more fun than you."

"We'll talk again when you're feeling more reasonable," Lauren pronounced with a long-suffering sigh and, recognizing the signs of a huff of teenager proportions coming on, left the room, telling herself to try and pick a quieter moment to speak to her sister about taking the whole danger in the fae world thing more seriously.

As soon as she was alone, Kenzi dropped the sulk in the blink of her huge silver-grey eye and her face settled into a grave resolute expression. Drugging the guards, lying her way out, getting Hale to cover for her escape – she mentally marshaled resources at her disposal and didn't feel shy of using any and all of them to get out and go on the field trip with Dyson. Her goals were clear – to stick it to her haughty older sister and to further her self-assigned mission of rescuing her as well as to see the handsome wolf again, if she was totally honest with herself.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

As Tasmin emerged upstairs after the Steve-scrambling, she was greeted by two questioning pairs of eyes as Trick and Stella pulled their noses out of a book – one of the many in their joint library.

"The man is a clinical idiot," Tamsin complained, "I tried scaring him into a bit of more detailed truth and I might've overdone things – looks like he's totally scrambled – babbles something about Evony, about a girl he was to kill. One thing for sure, he doesn't know who killed the Morrigan."

"Pity," Stella signed before resuming her study of the tome.

"So, we're no further ahead," Trick's sigh was almost identical.

"Why?" the blonde jerked a shoulder up and zipped up her red leather jacket with a no-nonsense air, "You told me you've got the antidote ready and I am all set to put the plan in motion."

"Which plan?" Trick inquired innocently as Stella looked up from the page through her thick lashes.

"The plan of infiltrating Lauren's ranks, of course," Tamsin pasted on a deadpan expression of someone too sassy to care, "I thought long and hard about what you told me and I think I can see a way of killing two birds with one stone - we're setting up Dyson as the Trojan wolf and I'm showing you that my priorities are not skewed by anything or anyone." 

A vibration hit her left side and Tamsin, in near awe, pressed a hand to her heart, as if to check if it was breaking, but as her fingers felt hard edges of a small rectangle, she recognized the sensation for what it was. "Sorry, my cell," she smiled wanly as she pulled the phone out of her breast pocket and squinted at the screen.

"Yep, we're totally going through with the plan, as soon as Dyson is back in town," she announced casually, "He's just texted me to say he's blowing town for a day or two, he's throwing a bag together now."

As a fae Tamsin had always been playing her cards close to her chest, as a woman she was hurt and humiliated by her lover's double treachery of cheating on her with a human. As both sides of her being dictated, she reserved the right to judge and punish to herself and refrained again from voicing her version of the wolf's recent actions and, in particular, of his urgent business and who it almost certainly was intimately connected with.

"Good, that gives us time to set everything into place," Trick nodded unaware of the undercurrents, "Actually, it would save us some time if we gave him the antidote before he leaves on whatever business of his he's leaving on."

"Are you afraid I'll change my mind?" Tamsin's tone was fast nearing mocking.

"No, but even if injected straight into his bloodstream, the antidote might need some time to work through his system," Trick replied with a logic that was hard to fault, "Let it take hold while we're thinking over a way to deliver our injected wolf to the doctor in the most unsuspicious manner."

"No biggie," Tamsin waved a dismissive hand in the air, "I can still intercept Dyson on his way out if you get me the antidote and a syringe small enough to be cunning about it."

"I'll get everything prepared," the Blood King hurried over to the side door leading to his supply room leaving the two women alone for a while.

"Am I the only one with a nasty aftertaste of conspiring behind one of our warrior's back on matters directly concerned with his good health?" Stella suddenly spoke up.

"Are you offering to let him in on our plans? Do you think he'll come willingly?" the valkyrie didn't bother to make it sound like a question.

"He's risked his life often enough, for his king and for our cause," the other woman remarked.

"His life, not his sanity and free will," the blonde pointed out and couldn't stop herself from adding acerbically, "Besides, I know better than to bank on anyone's allegiance now. Centuries of experience – you want something done, don't tell anyone until it's done."

"You don't have to do it, you know," Stella spoke up after an awkward silence, trying a different tack, "I mean do it to the wolf who you obviously care about. We can use another fae as a guinea-pig, say, Steve. Doesn't seem like he has any other uses."

Tamsin eyed the other woman with unmasked suspicion trying to fathom her motivation. She immediately swept aside common sympathy as something absolutely out of character with the Blood King's long-standing, though a bit on-and-off, associate and lover – Stella had been too long in this game and too good at surviving to be prone to harboring humane emotions like that. The range of options was not really that wide and the Valkyrie settled soon enough on the glaring one of it being another little test of her loyalty and determination, most probably instigated by and reported straight to Trick himself.

"I care for Dyson in as much as he can serve our cause and getting him inside Lauren's stronghold is now the best way for him to serve," Tamsin's smile was more of a scowl – mirthless and lop-sided, as if she was smiling through the pain, "If the antidote is the real thing, Lauren will get two nasty surprises instead of one."

"And if it isn't?" Stella asked softly in her lilting accent.

"The wolf kinda has it coming – too much straying lately," the Valkyrie snapped, her glowing eyes discouraging further questioning, "One way or another that will put him back on track."

Before Stella could try and inquire further into the valkyrie's stinging remarks, Trick made a hasty reappearance, a syringe in hand. The conversation was cut short, leaving the women as fuzzy about each other motives as they had started out.

"And also," Tamsin went on without missing a beat as she took the precious vial from the Blood King and squinted at the liquid inside, "You're wrong about Steve, Stella. He has other uses but first I might need a bit more mind-boggling to do."

###

Before any of the fae inhabitants of the mansion could get hurt in Kenzi's little escape scheme, the door squeaked open and a slight knock announced another visitor.

"May I?" Bo's dark–haired head peeked in the opening, "Step over the threshold? Or I can speak from here if that counts as less of an intrusion."

"I am not a pesky teen," Kenzi snapped back moments before realizing how pesky-teen-ish it sounded.

"Then why do you have a '_Keep out. I am a dead-eye with heavy objects'_ sign on your door?" the succubus chortled with good humor and stepped fully in without further ceremony.

"I bet Lauren hasn't even noticed," the girl pasted on a light pouty expression to better suit her allocated role.

"Believe me, she has," Bo's tone was soft as she approached the younger girl and put a warm hand on her shoulder.

"Are you succu-juicing me?" Kenzi asked eyeing her guest with a slight suspicion, "getting me to mellow, like Lauren orders you to calm her fae servants when she runs out of sedatives and someone gets into overdrive or overly homicidal."

"I've never juiced you or influenced you in any way," the succubus was suddenly serious to the point of grave, as if speaking under oath, and Kenzi suddenly wondered if Bo knew of her immunity to the enthrallment serum made of her blood.

"And not everything I do is Lauren-ordered, I've got some privileges around here," Bo smiled with a hint of mischief, "Like I was eavesdropping on you under my own steam entirely. What I heard is you itching to get out on a little Kenzi-adventure of your own and I'm here, like your faery god-mother to assist you before Lauren has a chance of prohibiting me just that. You promise to be back till next morning and not to get killed or visibly injured and I'll sneak you out of the house and cover for you with Lauren."

"And why would you do that?" the younger girl was cautious and curious, "Beside the sheer goodness of your heart?"

Bo passed a hand over the shorter girl's head and frowned looking down into her suspicious eyes, "I can see auras around here – most of them are dulled by the thrall, your sister's is often anxious and tired but she can also be burning and glowing – when she's with me, if I say so myself. _You_ are not happy, Kenzi, not ever. Not with Hale, not with Lauren, if anything, they seem to make you even more miserable. But then a couple of days ago something happened – your aura is not yet glowing but positively taking on some color. Whoever or whatever this revival of zest for life is caused by, I want it to go on and from strength to strength."

"Why would you care?" Kenzi whispered, "You barely know me."

Bo visibly hesitated before picking her words carefully, "I was raised by humans and in a corner of my heart still consider myself a bit human. And you're the most amazing human I've ever known. Fragile and strong, damaged and pure. And you might just be the only one who keeps Lauren human, you keep fighting for her humanity and I am grateful for that."

Kenzi went for an extra breath to keep her tear ducts from welling. "You love her, Bo," she stated simply and saw the other woman nod solemnly. "I am not sure I do," the human girl continued dejectedly, "not any longer. But I'll keep fighting for her. Cos fighting for her means fighting for you and for Dy … , for all the fae I think are worth it. Get me out and if that is a trap, succubus, I'll be spitting in your cornflakes any chance I get for the rest of my life here."

"No trap, no spit – that's a deal!" Bo couldn't help a laugh, "So, about fifteen minutes to get your best outfit on for whatever unmonitored Kenzi-time you have in mind and when I text you the coast is clear –go downstairs and out the front door like an extra insolent door-to-door salesperson."

"How are you gonna swing it?" the younger girl couldn't contain her curiosity.

"Well, I am head of security and master of CCTV," the succubus was positively enjoying herself, "Plus, I am uniquely positioned to distract Lauren. And keep her distracted till next morning."

"While you are at it, can you also distract Hale?" Kenzi had a sudden thought, "Send him on a patrol detail or something?" 

"I'll tweak the rota a bit and get him off your back," the brunette nodded, "And you seriously own me, girl. And as enormously as I like you, I might need to call you on it one day."

Though Bo's tone was feather-light, joking, Kenzi detected a concern lurking beneath the levity, almost an anxiety, but stored that observation away for later, for when she had no more pressing ones to mull over.

**Author's note: Sorry for a short chapter, guys, I can only claim a family emergency but promise to update soon with a bit of action and a bit of slow-burning romance. **


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Dyson tucked a gun in his shoulder holster – more a matter of habit, a leftover of his cop days than any real necessity – his best weapon was always with him and didn't need reloading at most inopportune moments. After a second's hesitation he slipped his police badge he had conveniently forgotten to hand in when he was quitting the force into his jacket. You never knew what might work best on doctor Taft as a means of persuasion. Thus prepared, he was on his way to the door when a sound from his inside pocket made him stop in his tracks.

"Don't let it be Kenzi running into a hitch," he murmured as he flipped the cell out. The girl had assured him airily that she would find a way to slip out unnoticed but he was still having doubts having seen the fortified mansion himself.

"Tams?" his tone raised in volume after he read the caller's id, "What's up?"

"A prisoner's up and about," the husky voice travelled down the line, uncharacteristically flustered and slightly out of breath, "An ogre burst out of his cage and I am having a bit of a difficulty getting him back in. So, if your highness deigns to drag his wolf-ass here and lend a paw, I might consider not busting your balls any time soon. Out of gratitude."

Dyson barked a _"Be with you in ten"_ and aced the subtle modern skill of sending texts on the run as he sprinted to his car. As he burned rubber along the street he hoped Kenzi would be able to decipher his heavily abbreviated message and that whatever-sized ogre Tamsin was struggling with wouldn't be too protracted of a hindrance.

Ten promised minutes later the wolf burst into the inconspicuous and magically guarded building that had been the fae resistance headquarter since the fae resistance began and cluttered downstairs taking his directions from the raised voices that were wafting up.

The tableau of a sweaty and puffing Tamsin, her jacket ripped, her light hair in disarray and her expression positively livid, made him stop for a gloating second but the snarling crazed-looking ogre she was tangled with forced the shifter straight into action. Not that he doubted the vakyrie's fighting prowess, but the sputtering red face in her head lock was not the one he had hoped to see in any foreseeable future. He yanked the ogre off the woman and wavered, peering into the all too familiar mug, now blanked out beyond its usual concentrated dimness.

"Get him!" Tamsin hissed from somewhere behind the two wrestling men and, oddly enough, both of them seemed to take her words to heart. Before Dyson could honor his commander's order, Steve suddenly heaved in his grip as if getting some serious second wind and, with a colossal effort, threw the shifter off him and against the bars of the cage and, for good measure, sank a fist into his ribs.

Dyson felt an excruciating shot of pain as a rib splintered under the half-healed flesh of his side and the back of his head hit the metal bars with a dry thump and, significantly dulled by these overwhelming sensations, a barely perceptible prick somewhere in the flesh of his forearm. The next moment the ogre stumbled back and the Valkyrie inserted herself between the men.

"Still dreaming, Dyson?" she yelled, driving Steve away from the dazzled wolf with a couple of nicely aimed blows of her own.

"Fully awake," the wolf snarled unpeeling himself from the bars and, gritting his teeth against the pain, he lunged forward and brought the ogre to the ground, winded and quickly choking.

"What shall we do with him?" Dyson added a hefty slap to further calm the captive down and looked up into the blonde's scrunched face.

"Back into the cage," the Valkyrie tugged the ogre up by one of his now limp arms as Dyson hoisted him up almost wishing Steve would spring into action again, offer up some more resistance and give them a legitimate reason to quieten him forever. But the huge fae was no more energetic than a rag-doll as he was dragged across the room and thrown into the cage, without muttering a protest or lifting an eyelid.

"What's his deal?" the wolf leaned against the bars as soon as the door was clung shut, "Didn't like the prison food?"

"I don't like our food either," Tamsin panted back, "And I might've overdone it a bit with the interrogation."

"As in I might've accidentally fried his brain trying to get him to tell me anything approaching intelligence on his mistress the late Morrigan," she elaborated under the wolf's quizzical gaze, "In my defense, there was not that much to fry."

"Aren't you giving your all to the cause?" the wolf mumbled sarcastically, though more than relived at hearing Steve, with his roasted mind, was not likely to recognize him from their brief encounter.

"The late Morrigan?" he asked, belatedly registering the use of the title.

"Yep, her bitchy dark highness snuffed it," the Valkyrie went on, "I personally say good riddance and a thank you to whoever dispatched her but Trick is livid – he had some designs on Evony. And he's pissed someone broke his direct orders of taking her alive. That is, if the dispatcher is one of ours."

"Is he?" the wolf asked, his face almost inscrutable beyond a wince of pain as his hand pressed against his disturbed wound.

"No idea, we haven't got the body, a human coroner got to her first and we have lost a lot of our contacts when you and I had to leave the force and slip under the radar," Tamsin returned just as levelly.

A heavy pause ensued, long enough for either of them to confide, each their own piece, an invitation that they choose to ignore, were too far gone and boggled down in their lies and shifting priorities to take.

Finally, Dyson got enough breath back to consider moving and straightened. "I need to go, Tams, unless you have any more ogres to subdue, errands to run?" he asked absent-mindedly, focused on recalling if he had tanked up.

"Free as a bird," Tamsin dismissed him with a wave, "Just don't let anyone run you ragged. I might have a little assignment for you when you come back."

"Hopefully, the new one won't entail any rib-damage," Dyson grumbled back, "I seem to have been knocked around a bit too much these days."

"Ok, I'll send you to work the ladies," the blonde chortled back, "If you're getting too old to work the men."

If the wolf was less distracted by the pain and his Kenzi-bound train of thought, he might pick up on some open maliciousness in the woman's tone but catching the nuances hadn't been his forte at the best of times and he left without a backwards glance, followed by a singing pair of green eyes, hurt and spelling revenge.

###

"Is there an active threat?" Hale asked, obviously surprised by the out-of-the-blue detail the succubus had just dumped on him, "If there's such, I need to be with Kenzi."

Bo plastered on the gravest mien she can collect her features into and glared at the man, "Last time I checked I am the head of security here, Hale, so let me leave your question go unanswered and do my job. Suffice it to say I have my reasons to believe we need an extra fae patrolling the outer perimeter tonight. You'll be relieved tomorrow and don't forget to report in with me straightaway. And hope I don't need to remind you what kind of punishment deserting your post entails?"

"I would never think of deserting and letting my Queen down," the man replied miserably, "But Kenzi?"

"Kenzi'll be perfectly fine, promise," Bo was mollified by the genuine worry lurking in his big brown eyes, "And believe me, you'll be doing her a good deed by doing just what I've told you to."

As soon as the siren left, Bo turned her attention to the surveillance system and squinted at the screen as Kenzi's small figure stomped out of the house, slightly hunched and visibly unsure if she was going to make it out quietly as had been promised, or caught in the blaring of alarms.

"Still don't trust me fully, smart girl," the succubus muttered as her fingers nimbly ran across the keyboard wiping the short piece of footage that registered the little human's exit, "No surprise you've lost faith in humanity with a bio like yours."

"Time to deal with the love of my life, who just happens to be a genius and a disturbed vindictive tyrant," she threw her jacket off her shoulders and undid the top buttons of her top on her way to the lab, "Best recipe – entice, satisfy and exhaust."

With that plan of action playing right into her strength, Bo made short work of the first point and soon found herself on the brink of engaging in the next two.

"You do need to relax, cupcake," the succubus ran her hands across the doctor's tensed shoulders, her fingers digging into the flesh expertly.

"I know," Lauren leaned into her touch with a sigh, "And that's why I allowed you to drag me out of the lab."

"You practically ordered me to get you out at any cost," Bo laughed, "I considered seduction but thought physical coercion would be quicker."

"Is there any seduction to follow?" the blonde's lips curled into a smile as she turned to face her lover.

"Is that another order?" the other woman's hands slid down and found purchase around the slim waist, "Or can I take any creative liberties?"

"Oh, you are good with taking," Lauren gasped as cool fingers worked their way inside her blouse. "I mean, taking liberties…" she stumbled, her thoughts wandering as the warm body pressed into hers, leading her the few short steps to the bed, pulling her down onto its silk expanse.

###

Dyson rounded the corner of the street and the tension floated from his body at the sight of a diminutive figure pacing the sidewalk, her arms wrapped around herself for warmth or reassurance.

"Your carriage, my lady," he tried for goofily gallant as he threw the passenger door open and the girl looked in cutting off his gracious half-bow with a rebuke, "You're late and my bum is frozen to beyond numb."

"Sorry, something urgent came up," he sincerely apologized and cranked up the heater as she slipped in and started fidgeting in her seat, settling in and restarting circulation in the part she had complained of freezing off.

"No baggage?" the wolf quirked an eye-brow.

"Plenty of," she countered calmly, "the kind I never leave behind. The rest can be bought on the way on as and if required."

"Right," Dyson nodded, recognizing the wisdom of making her escape without being loaded down with a suitcase. "A pit-stop at a drug-store?" he added, his fingers fluttering across the blooded spot on his shirt strategically covered by his jacket but clearly not getting any smaller, "I might need some supplies too."

"Packed your Teddy and left out a tooth-brush?" Kenzi quipped, eying his profile, "Or is it a chew-toy?"

"Do the belt up," the wolf grunted back and stretched his own long arm to tug it across her slim body and click it shut when she didn't seem in any particular hurry to do it herself.

The girl visibly tensed at the physical contact but didn't flinch. "The fact that we kissed doesn't make you my social worker," she pouted, "Next thing I know you're gonna bug me about my greens and flossing."

"I am a fast driver," Dyson grinned toothily, "Belting up is a must for human passengers. And food which is green and not meat is something we, wolves, sniff at and pee on."

A slight smile played on her lips as she relaxed into her seat, relaxed by the warmth and by his deep voice, slanting a look at the suburbs flying by.

"Got out all right?" he asked in a more serious vein and saw her nod, "Weird that your sister just lets you into the big scary world full of her ill-wishers."

"She doesn't if she can help it," Kenzi mumbled back, unwilling to admit she had had help, "But I have my ways."

"Which you might need to work on," the wolf was suddenly barking as he gripped the steering wheel and floored the accelerator, switching lanes, "We're being followed."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

When the cell's shrilling cut through the soft gasps that had been filling the room for quite a while, Lauren shot up disconnecting her lips from the soft milky-white toned flesh. Bo extended a languid arm to pull her lover back down but the blonde brushed it off impatiently and rolled over to the side of the bed to grab the device off the nightstand.

"Listening," she snapped into the piece of plastic and her brow furrowed in concern as she raised her voice in question, "Not her car? What man? Fae? Human?"

Bo inched over across the silk sheets and put her head against Lauren's shoulder, her fingers caressing, her ears straining.

"No idea… just saw her getting into his car… Young, handsome," the voice rasped down the line, distinct enough for both of the women to hear, "They seem pretty cozy, hugging or something ... driving through the suburbs now, heading out of town."

"Keep following them and report back as soon as their destination is clear," the doctor instructed in a clipped tone and disconnected.

"What's wrong, my love?" the succubus asked, a premonition already churning in her stomach.

"You are, you are all wrong," the blonde replied curtly, her lips pursed as she scrutinized the other woman with suspicion in her wide-open brown eyes devoid of all the passion and tenderness of the previous moments, "You let Kenzi escape and covered for her."

Bo's mouth shaped a perfect _O_ of surprise but she recovered enough to go for broke with panache.

"Yes, I did," the succubus straightened proudly, "The poor girl just wants to have some fun, away from this mausoleum of a place."

"You both defied me and my orders," Lauren's tone was crispy dry, "She's my kid sister, but you're my thrall, my slave."

Bo flinched, as if slapped, and crossed her arms across her bare chest in a bout of humiliation-induced self-consciousness.

"That's how you see me," she enunciated through clenched teeth.

"Exactly," Lauren's eyes were practically slits as her own hurt and sense of betrayal took over, "As a gorgeous pleasuring slave with more initiative than is healthy for a slave. How can you be disobeying me at all?"

"I wasn't," Bo mustered up a crooked half-smile, in a supreme effort of sidelining her breaking heart for the sake of dispelling suspicion that threatened to fall heavily over her and over her human accomplice, "You never ordered me _not_ to let Kenzi out. I was acting on my desire to make you happy, my love, my Queen. I thought by making Kenzi happy I'd help fix your relationship with the girl."

"By playing into her whims you've put her into danger," the doctor gritted, "and god knows what kind of fun she's up to, sneaking out of my house lie that."

"As your spy has reported she's meeting up with a handsome dude. Pretty sure, I've got an idea on what she's up to. Poor kid must be sick and tired of the gift-wrapped, mindless siren toy you've foisted on her," Bo tried for a little offensive.

The blonde's shuttered face bore no indication whether she was buying the explanation but Bo could see the blonde's aura brightening with a surge of unidentifiable emotion.

"Why do you have to see betrayal and ill-intent everywhere, Lauren?" the succubus pleaded, her chocolate eyes soulful, "Why can't you trust those closest to you to love you regardless and not to conspire behind your back? "

"Because that's the only way not to get backstabbed by them," the other woman said and her voice caught in her throat, "Because nobody can love what I am."

"Kenzi may have her little escapade but acting at your own discretion is not something I expect from my thralls or lovers, Bo," in a fluid motion Lauren was off the bed and pulling on the clothes that were lying haphazardly on the rug. At the door she turned over to the brunette with a brusque order, "Get dressed. You kind is not known for modesty but let me be old-fashioned here in not wishing my guards to play eye-witnesses to my lover's perfect boobs. From now on you're under house arrest in your room, without the phone or any communication with others. Until or unless I decide otherwise."

###

Kenzi's hands were gripping her sharp knees but that was the only sign of panic she allowed herself to manifest.

"Is that my tail or yours?" she asked catching Dyson's look, "Cos I don't usually sport furry appendages but you, on the other hand … " She let the sentence trail off in an attempt at a joke.

"Scout honor, I wasn't being followed when I was going to meet you," Dyson threw off, concentration etching a straight line down his forehead.

"Girl-scout honor, I wasn't either," Kenzi mimed his tone.

"Neither of us was a scout, right?" she clarified after a second and was quite disproportionately happy to see the man crack a half-smile. After a quick thought she started tentatively and slightly apologetically, "Ok, don't be mad, wolfie, remember, I saved your life …"

"I've repaid the debt," Dyson cut in, his eyes studying the offending car in the rear view mirror.

"Ok, then remember I am a girl with 23 years of earthly experience and zero spy skills apart from my innate talent of Kenzi-ness, at least, try to keep being gallant. I might've brought company along… Could be that fashion-forward bitch that sicced her mountain-man on me."

"No way she could've ordered a tail on you, dead bitches don't do that in my experience," the wolf grumbled, making another sharp turn and seeing his suspicions confirmed by the follower's car stubbornly refusing to widen the gap between them, "More likely your vaunted ways of outwitting your sister not quite up to scratch?"

"I am wisely clamping down on the itch to ask how you come to know about the bitch's dead status," the girl piped up in a thin voice, "With an abiding suspicion nearing certainty I don't want to hear the answer."

"Maybe, Bo ratted me out after all," Kenzi mused aloud after another stretch of tense silence, "Though she seemed sincere enough. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, anyway, Lauren's got a houseful, a mansion-ful of snitches."

"So, we'll have to assume the doctor's people are after us," Dyson eased his foot on the accelerator, "What have they seen so far?"

"Not much, me getting in a car with you and driving off like crazy," the girl picked on his thought straightaway, "Which is just rebellious me, getting away with a dude for some Lauren-unmonitored time."

"That's the line you'll be sticking to when you get back," the shifter nodded with resolve, "And the dude is actually not the type to bring back to meet your family – say, a small-time con, trading in stolen vehicles, someone you picked up in a bar while walking on the wild side."

"Hey, I am a decent, well-brought-up girl," Kenzi pouted squinting at the wolf's frowning profile.

"If I ever saw my sister in a dive I met you in, I'd rip her tail off," he chortled.

"Do you have a sister?" Kenzi immediately inquired.

"Same answer as with scouts but hypothetically speaking," he returned unperturbed.

"Good thing I haven't got a tail," the girl mumbled, "Or anything rippable."

"So, back to the dude and your little rebellion," Dyson hid a grin in his short beard, "He made the stalker and thought it was the cops. He shook off the tail and on you go to some happy times at an out-of-town motel, the details of which you will pointedly refuse to share. End of story."

"Really? And we so like talking sizes with my sis," the girl sneered piqued by the fae's easy assumption her rebellion could take that direction, "Try ridding us of the company first, Mr Big Plans."

"It's not for nothing your dude deals in stolen wheels," Dyson's dour face suddenly split into a boyishly mischievous grin that sent blue sparkles to his eyes. "I told you belting up was a must, didn't I?" he added, flooring the accelerator.

As the wolf took the car at a speed-limit defying velocity around the corner, narrowly escaping a hydrant, he slanted a glance at the girl. Kenzi was no longer fidgeting for warmth or tensing with nerves, she returned his glance, as close to enthusiastic as he had ever seen her.

"If that turned out not Lauren after all, would be a pity and a waste of a damned good story, "she giggled, "Kenzi the mob princess making a getaway in a stolen car. Please, can I say it was stolen and that's why you got freaked out?"

"You are enjoying it?" Dyson asked with surprise as he took in her glowing eyes and lips parted in excitement, a girl so different from the one he had seen at the cemetery, "I can almost imagine you happy and tragedy-free."

Kenzi's smile dimmed but not faded as she settled into the back of her seat with a sigh, "I am finally not cold, you are handsome enough and the car's fast enough. What is there not to enjoy?"

"The risk?" he suggested, executing another break-neck maneuver, "A tiny miscalculation and we might end up a heap of burning metal."

"Can't be more painful than living," the girl muttered almost inaudibly and knew the wolf's ears picked her words despite the squeal of tires. "Anyway, what was the emergency that held you up at the expense of my poor freezing bum?" she asked immediately in an attempt at a diversion, "If driving and talking is not too much of a strain on you?"

Dyson's first response was to slot the vehicle into a side alley and breeze through it while their pursuer, caught by surprise by yet another trick, sped by along the main street. Then, the wolf briefly considered brushing off her question or toning the Steve-related incident down to a negligible occurrence but the words slipped out of his mouth as if Kenzi exuded a gassy version of truth serum.

"Was called to deal with a prisoner gone berserk and got kicked in the ribs for my efforts," he imparted and dished out a few more details.

"Are you alright?" she inquired, concern clear in her tone, "You seem to be going through quite a rough patch as far as the integrity of your hide is concerned."

"Right as rain," he waved a dismissal to her worries but was unashamedly pleased to hear them. As the car rolled onto the slightly bumpy, but appealingly empty, dirt road he couldn't resist a childish appeal to her female sympathy, "The stitches held, I heal almost as fast as I drive, though have to say, that ogre has some good aim – knew where to poke me for maximum effect."

"As if he knew that you had been wounded," Kenzi added in a low voice with a sudden shiver.

Dyson tried to recollect the details of their previous runi-in with Steve and whether the ogre could've noticed his weak spot then but couldn't credit the thick-skulled fae with such a degree of observation. The other possible explanation, on the other hand, being a pure coincidence and a stroke of bad luck, he discarded the thought as currently irrelevant.

"What matters is that he's too scrambled to spill on me or I'd have a hard time explaining a couple of things I've done unauthorized to the people in my camp," he confided to the girl and lightened the tone as her lips pressed into a thin concerned line, "And I could really use the exercise. And I feel just fine."

The words were barely pronounced as, with uncanny timing, Dyson felt a sudden jolt of nausea and clenched his teeth against the nearly painful weakness taking hold of his body. His hand went inside his jacket to test his own claim that the stitches hadn't popped and his fingers flitted over the nicely healing wound. Right then another spell of dizziness and malaise hit him so badly that he had to lean forward limply, almost falling over the steering wheel.

"Are you?" Kenzi caught a glimpse of his paled face and grabbed his forearm, "coz to me you look as fine as a freshman morning after an outrageous binge. And you feel feverish."

"I am ok," the wolf growled obstinately, clutching at the steering wheel and trying to focus on the road ahead, while his body shuddered under the onslaught of sudden chills.

"That's just lame, wolfie," the girl fumbled with his shirt to peer at his injured side and sat back, frowning, "The wound is almost gone but, sorry to break it to you, you're obviously sick, Cujo. Caught a bug?"

"I don't catch bugs," Dyson shook his head, to underscore his point as much as to clear his clouding vision.

"Fleas then?" Kenzi failed to sound remotely mocking as she pressed a palm against his positively burning forehead, "And here I am starting to think a cheap motel with rooms let by the hour and no questions asked might not just a figment in our cover story."


End file.
